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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






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TJNITED STATES. OF AMERICA. 



ROMANCES OF THE REIGN OF HENRI II. ; THE VALOIS 

" ROMANCES; THE D'ARTAGNAN ROMANCES; THE 

REGENCY ROMANCES; THE MARIE ANTOINETTE 

ROMANCES; THE COUNT OF MONTE CR/STO.etc. 



BY 

ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTES 



LISTS OF CHARACTERS. 




BOSTON: (*lll$~^ 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1895. 



k-. 






Copyright, 1892, 1893, 189$, 
By Little, Brown, and Company 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

The Two Dianas. Introductory Note ... 5 

List of Characters 9 

The Page of the Duke of Savoy. Introduc- 
tory Note . . 13 

List of Characters • • 17 

Marguerite de Valois. Introductory Note . 21 

List of Characters 27 

La Dame de Monsoreau. Introductory Note . 29 

List of Characters 33 

The Forty-Five. Introductory Note .... 35 

List of Characters 39 

The Three Musketeers. Introductory Note . 41 

List of Characters . . 51 

Twenty Years After. Introductory Note . . 55 

List of Characters 65 

The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Introductory 

Note 69 

List of Characters 79 

The Black Tulip. Introductory Note . . . 83 

List of Characters 87 

Le Chevalier D'Harmental. Introductory Note 89 

List of Characters 99 



4 CONTENTS. 

Page 

The Regent's Daughter. Introductory Note 103 

List of Characters Ill 

Memoirs of a Physician. Introductory Note 115 

List of Characters 131 

The Queen's Necklace. Introductory Note . 135 

List of Characters 155 

Ange Pitou. Introductory Note 159 

List of Characters 177 

La Comtesse de Charny. Introductory Note . 181 

List of Characters 199 

The Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. Introduc- 
tory Note 211 

List of Characters 217 

The Count of Monte Cristo. List of Char- 
acters 219 



THE TWO DIANAS. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The claim of Alexandre Dumas to be considered 
first among historical romancists, past or present, can 
hardly be disputed ; and his magic pen finds abun- 
dant, rich material for the historical setting of the 
tale told in the following pages. The period in which 
the action of " The Two Dianas " is supposed to take 
place, covers the later years of Henri II, and the 
brief and melancholy reign of his oldest son, Fran- 
cois II., the ill-fated husband of Mary Stuart, whose 
later history has caused her brief occupancy of the 
throne of France to be lost sight of. This period 
saw the germination and early maturity, if not the 
actual sowing, of the spirit of the Reformation in 
France. It was during these years that the name 
of John Calvin acquired the celebrity which has 
never waned, and that his devoted followers, La 
Renaudie, Theodore de Beze, Ambroise Pare', the 
famous surgeon, and the immortal Coligny be- 
gan the crusade for freedom of worship which 
was steadily maintained, unchecked by Tumult of 
Amboise, or Massacre of St. Bartholomew, until 



6 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Henri of Navarre put the crown upon their heroic 
labors, and gave them respite for a time with the 
famous " Edict of Nantes," made more famous still 
by its "^Revocation" a century later under the 
auspices of Madame de Maintenon, at the instiga- 
tion of her Jesuit allies. Those portions of the 
story which introduce us to the councils of the Re- 
formers are none the less interesting because the 
characters introduced are actual historical person- 
ages, nor can it fail to add interest to the encounter 
between La Eenaudie and Pardaillan to know that 
it really took place, and that the two men had 
previously been to each other almost nearer than 
brothers. It was but one of innumerable heart- 
rending incidents, inseparable from all civil and 
religious conflicts, but in which those presided over 
by the Florentine mother of three Valois kings of 
France were prolific beyond belief. 

How closely the author has adhered to historical 
fact for the groundwork of his tale, will appear by 
comparing it with one of Balzac's Etudes Philoso- 
phiques, entitled "Sur Catherine de Me'dicis," the 
first part of which covers the same period as " The 
Two Dianas," and describes many of the same 
events; the variations are of the slightest. 

The patient forbearance of Catherine de Me'dicis, 
under the neglect of her husband, and the arrogant 
presumption of Diane de Poitiers, abetted by the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 7 

Constable de Montmorency ; her swift and speedy 
vengeance upon them as soon as she was left a 
widow with her large brood of possible kings ; her 
jealous fear of the influence of the Due de Guise 
and his brother the Cardinal de Lorraine, which led 
her to desire the death of her eldest son, the un- 
fortunate Franqois, because his queen was the 
niece of the powerful and ambitious brothers, and 
which also led her to oppose their influence by a 
combination with two such incongruous elements 
as the Constable Montmorency and the Protestant 
Bourbon princes of Navarre, remaining all the 
while the bitterest foe that the reformed religion 
ever had, — all these, as described in the following 
pages, are strictly in conformity with historical fact. 
So, too, is the story of the defence of St. Quentin 
in its main details, and of the siege of Calais, 
where the Due de Guise did receive the terrible 
wound which caused the sobriquet of Le Balafre 
to be applied to him, and was cured by the skilful 
hand of Master Ambroise Pare. So of the Tumult 
of Amboise, and the painful scenes attending the 
execution of the victims; and so, finally, of the 
scene at the death-bed of Francois II., the contro- 
versy between the shrinking conservatism of the 
King's regular medical advisers, and the daring 
eclecticism of Pare, proposing to perform the " new 
operation " of trepanning. It may, perhaps, be said 



8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

that the Chancellor de l'Hopital is made to appear 
in too unfavorable a light ; he certainly was some- 
thing far above the mere bond-slave of Catherine de 
Medicis. 

Dumas himself tells us what basis of truth there 
is for the sometimes amusing, sometimes serious, 
but always intensely interesting confusion between 
Martin-Guerre and his unscrupulous double. 

Nowhere, it may be said, in history or romance, 
is there to be found so touching a glimpse as this 
of poor Mary Stuart. Here we see naught save the 
lovely and lovable side of the unfortunate queen, 
without a hint of the fatal weakness which, as it 
developed in the stormy later years of her life, 
made her marvellous beauty and charm the instru- 
ments of her ruin. 

So much for those portions of " The Two Dianas " 
which rest upon a basis of fact. History records 
further that Henri II. was accidentally killed in 
friendly jousting by the Comte de Montgommery; 
but with that history ends and romance begins. 
The personage whom Monsieur Dumas presents to 
us under that title perhaps never existed ; but let 
the reader be the judge, after reading of the pure 
and sacred but unhappy love of Gabriel de Mont- 
gommery and Diane de Castro, if a lovelier gem of 
fiction was ever enclosed in an historical setting. 



THE TWO DIANAS. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1521-1574. 

Fbancois I., King of Trance. 

Henri II., his successor. 

Catherine de Medicis, Queen to Henri II. 

The Dauphin, afterwards Francois II. 

Henri, his brother, afterwards Henri III. 

Mary Stuart, married to the Dauphin. 

Mary, Queen of England. 

Due d'Orleans, afterwards Charles IX. 

Marguerite de France, sister of Henri II. 

Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henri II. 

Princess Elisabeth. 

Francois, Due d'Alencon. 

Due de Guise, Lieutenant-General of France. 

MONSEIGNEUR LE CARDINAL DE LORRAINE, his brother. 

Due d'Aumale, brother of Due de Guise. 
Marquis d'Elbcsuf, 



officers of Due de Guise. 



Marquis de Vaudemont, 

Monsieur de Biron, 

Monsieur de Thermes, 

Constable Anne de Montmorency. 

Francois de Montmorency, his son. 

Antoine de Navarre. 

Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Cond6, his brother. 



10 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Philip II., of Spain. 
Philibert Emmanuel, Due de Savoie. 
Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. 
Captain Oger, 



French officers serv- 
ing with the Admiral. 



Monsieur de Lauxford, an engineer, 

Monsieur de Rambouillet, 

Monsieur de Breuil, 

Baron de Vaulpergues, 

Madame de Breze, Duehesse de Yalentinois, commonly called 

Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri II. 
Diane, Duehesse de Castro, afterwards Duehesse d'Angouleme, 

daughter of Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers. 
Madame de Leviston, in attendance on Diane de Castro. 
Horace Farnese, Due de Castro. 
Madame d'^tampes, mistress of Francois I. 
Gabriel, Seigneur de Lorge, Vicomte de Montgommery, styling 

himself Vicomte d'Exmes, in love with Diane de Castro. 
Jacques, Comte de Montgommery, Gabriel's father, imprisoned 

by Henri II. 
Master Elyot, intendant of the County of Montgommery. 
Perrot Travigny, squire to the Comte de Montgommery. 
Martin-Guerre, Gabriel's squire. 
Bertrande B-olles, wife of Martin-Guerre. 
Aloyse, Gabriel's nurse. 

Enguerrand Lorien, squire of the Counts of Vimoutiers. 
Arnauld du Thill, Martin-Guerre's double, in the secret 

service of Constable de Montmorency. 
Monsieur de Boissy, Grand Equerry of France. 
Monsieur de Salvoison, governor of the Chatelet Prison. 
Monsieur de Sazerac, his successor. 
Monsieur de Langeais, ^ 
Monsieur de Boutieres, 
Comte de Sancerre, I gentlemen of the Court of Fran- 
Monsieur d'Aussun, f cois I. 

Monsieur d'Enghien, 
Comte de Montausier, 



of the King's council. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 11 

Monsieur de Vieilleville, i 

Monsieur le Colonel-General de Bonnivet, 
Gaspard de Tavannes, I gentlemen of 

COMTE DE POMMERIVE, j the C ° Urt ° f 

Marechal d'Anville, Henri II. 

Monsieur de Buri, J 

President Bertrand, 
Chancellor Olivier de Lenville, 

CoMTE D'AUMALE, 

Monsieur de Sedan, 
Monsieur de Humieres, 
Monsieur de Saint-Andre, 

COMTE DE SaINT-ReMY, 

Richelieu, captain of arquebusiers. 

Monsieur d'Avallon, captain of the guards of Henri II. 

Jacques Amyot, the preceptor of the princes. 

Lady Lennox, 1 ... 

.. .. _ V governesses ot the princesses. 

Madame de Coni, J ° 

Madame Dayelle, lady-in-waiting to Mary Stuart. 

Nicolas Duval, a councillor of Parliament. 

T _ _. , _ T 1 knights in the tourna- 

Jacques de Savoie, Due de Nemours, ° , . . „ 

, >T , ' , -n V ment at which Henri 

Alphonse d Este, Due de lerrara, j TT , .,, , 

J II. was killed. 

Ambroise Pare, surgeon. 

Chancellor de l'Hopital. 

Brantome, historian. 

Antoine de Baif, dramatic writer. 

Remy Belleau, a poet. 

Marechal Pierre Strozzi, an engineer of the sixteenth 

century. 

Plorimond, an usher at the Prench court. 

-^ , ' ]■ waiting-maids to Diane de Castro. 

Denise, J d 

Nostradamus, astrologer and physician. 

John Calvin. 

Theodore de Beze, historian of the Reformed Church. 

Baron de la Renaudie, a Huguenot officer. 



12 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



condemned Calviuists. 



Baron de Pardaillan, an officer of the king's troops, 

David, a Calvinistic minister. 

Des Avenelles, advocate, a traitor to the Calvinists. 

Baron Castelnau de Chalosses,^ 

comte de vlllemangis, 

comte de mazeres, 

Baron de Raunay, , 

Monsieur de Braguelonne, Lieutenant of Police. 

Master Arpion, his secretary. 

Lignieres, an agent of police. 

Antoine de Motjchy, otherwise styled Demochares, Doctor of 

the Sorbonne and Canon of Noyon, Grand Inquisitor of the 

Faith in Prance. 
Jean Peuqtjoy, syndic of the weavers of St. Quentin. 
Pierre Peuquoy, an armorer. 
Babette, Pierre Peuquoy's sister. 
Lord Wentworth, Governor of Calais, 
Lord Grey, his brother-in-law, commanding the English archers. 
Lord Derby, an English officer. 
Sir Edward Pleming, herald of England. 
Anselme, a fisherman. 
Andre, a page. 
Sister Monique, Superior of the Benedictine convent at St. 

Quentin. 
Heinrich Scharfenstein, ^ 

PlLLETROTJSE, 

Prantz Scharfenstein, 

Malemort, 

Lactance, 

YVONNET, 

Ambrosio, 
Landry, 

1 veterans of the war in Lorraine, entering the ser- 

„ * j vice of Vicomte d'Exmes. 

contamine, 

Balu, 



. officers and soldiers in Gabriel's 



THE 



PAGE OF THE DUKE OF SAVOY. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

In " The Page of the Duke of Savoy " we meet again 
most of the members of the doughty band of adven- 
turers with whom Gabriel de Montgomery is said 
in the "Two Dianas" to have accomplished the 
marvellous feat of carrying the Old Fort of Calais 
by escalade: Malemort, the seamed and scarred 
hero of a hundred fights, whose first rush was 
always so impetuous and reckless that he inevit- 
ably received a fresh wound at the very beginning, 
and was incapacitated for further service ; Yvonnet 
the dandy, bold as a lion by daylight, and timid as 
a hare when the sun had gone down ; Pilletrousse, 
the rifler of dead men's pockets ; Lactance, whose 
excessive blood-thirstiness was only equalled by 
his devoutness ; and the two Scharfensteins, uncle 
and nephew, whose feats of strength out-Hercules 
Hercules. Procope, Maldent, and Fracasso are new 
acquaintances, equally diverting, each in his par- 
ticular line. 



14 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The period of this tale was crowded with events 
of deepest import to the world's history: it em- 
braced the culmination of the world-empire of 
Charles V. and his abdication; the early years of 
the reign of Philip II., in which his future policy 
and conduct were so clearly foreshadowed ; the 
struggle for supremacy between the Guises and 
Catherine de Me'dicis, the Florentine mother of the 
last three Valois Kings of France ; and the irre- 
sistible growth and spread of the Eeformation. 

Of all the famous men who fought and governed 
in that age, perhaps the very noblest was Emman- 
uel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, whom Dumas selected 
as the central figure of his story. All that is here 
told us of him and his character is amply supported 
by authority. 

Many of the historical events woven into the 
plot of the "Two Dianas " are here presented to us 
again, mainly in forms which follow the chronicles 
more closely. This is especially true of the life of 
the Comte de Montgomery, and the circumstances 
attending the fatal disaster at the Tournelles. 
There is no reason to believe that the death of 
Henri II. was the result of anything but pure acci- 
dent, nor has history any more to say of the Comte 
de Montgomery than is said by our author in the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 15 

following pages. It will be noticed, however, that 
the gloomy prognostications of Nostradamus re- 
appear here in slightly different form. 

As to the siege of Saint Quentin, too, the de- 
scription given in the present work is entitled to 
the credit of being more nearly in accord with the 
facts than that which omits to mention Dandelot's 
presence, and makes Gaspard de Coligny play a 
subordinate part to Gabriel de Montgomery. It 
was the failure of Philip II. to follow up the fall of 
the town (inexplicable unless it was due to his 
jealousy of the Duke of Savoy) which saved Paris, 
and not the defence made by the garrison and citi- 
zens, heroic and devoted as their conduct was. 

It would be perhaps more accurate to entitle 
"The Page of the Duke of Savoy" a part of the 
romance of history than an historical romance ; for 
aside from the scenes in which the exploits of Pro- 
cope and his associates appear, and the deeply 
touching love episode of Emmanuel Philibert and 
his pseudo-page, there are few chapters of which the 
historical accuracy can be impugned, — from the 
famous scene at Brussels when Charles V. laid 
down his sceptre, to his mock obsequies at the 
little convent in Spain ; from Henri II. haughtily 
receiving the heralds of Spain and England, to 



16 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Henri II. meekly consenting to the shameful treaty 
of Cateau-Cambresis ; from the brilliant pageant 
and superb jousting in the lists at the Tournelles, 
to the chamber of death, with Catherine de Mddicis 
hovering jealously about the bed of the dying king, 
who had been so long and consistently unfaithful 
to her. 

The epoch is one which readily lends itself to 
the romantic treatment, and under the hand of the 
master few opportunities of arousing the interest 
and moving the heart of the reader have been lost. 



THE 



PAGE OF THE DUKE OF SAVOY. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Period, 1528-1580. 

The Emperor, Charles V. 

Mary of Austria, the Queen Dowager of Hungary, sister of 

Charles Y. 
Mary, Queen of England. 

Philip, Prince of Spain, her husband, son of Charles V. 
Queen Eleanor, sister of Charles Y. 
Don Carlos, the Emperor's grandson. 
Emmanuel Philibert, Due de Savoie, surnamed Tete de Fer, 

nephew of Charles Y. 
Scianca-Eerro, his squire. 
Gaetano, his major-domo. 

Charles the Good, of Portugal, father of Emmanuel Philibert. 
Beatrice of Portugal, Emmanuel Philibert's mother. 
Leona Maraviglia, passing as Leone, the page of the Duke 

of Savoy. 
Comte Erancesco Maraviglia, her father. 
La Comtesse Maraviglia. 
Comte Odoardo Maraviglia, Leona's brother, Ambassador of 

the Kings of Erance and Spain. 
John Frederick, Elector of Saxony. 
Admiral of Castile, "\ 
Duke of Medina Coeli, 
Ruy Gomez de Silva, 
Duke of Alva, 
Don Luis de Yargas, 



Spanish noblemen. 



18 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Francesco Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan. 

Archbishop of Toledo. 

Cardinal Pole. 

"William of Orange. 

Don Guzman d'Avila, Herald of Spain. 

Signor Angelo Policastro, Astrologer to Charles V. 

Comte Waldeck, in the cavalry service of Charles V. 

Vicomte Waldeck, his son. 

The Bastard Son of Comte Waldeck. 

Odinet de Montfort, a Savoyard cavalier. 

Councillor Philibert Brusselius. 

Francois I., King of France. 

Henri IP, his successor. 

Catherine de Medicis, 

Diane de Poitiers. 

Diane de Castro. 

Marguerite de France, sister of Henri II. 

The Dauphin, afterwards Francois II. 

Mary Stuart, married to the Dauphin. 

Mary Fleming, 

Mary Seaton, I M stuart>s (i Four Marys> „ 

Mary Livingston, 

Mary Beaton, 

Elizabeth de Valois, ) d bters of Henri IL 

Marguerite de Valois, ) 

Due d'Orleans, afterwards Charles IX. 

Due de Nevers, Lieutenant-general of the king. 

Henri, his brother, afterwards Henri III. 

Constable de Montmorency. 

Gabriel de Montmorency, his son. 

Monsieur de Chatillon, the Constable's nephew. 

Francois, Due de Guise. 

Cardinal de Lorraine, 

DUC D'AUMALE, [ his brothers . 

Marquis d'Elbceuf, 
Cardinal Guise. 



LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 



19 



surgeons. 



men of letters at the French Court. 



Admiral Coligny, Envoy extraordinary of Henri II 
Monsieur Dandelot de Coligny, his brother. 
Monsieur de Boissy, Grand Equerry of France. 
Monsieur de Vieilleville, Grand Chamberlain. 
Alphonse d'Este, Due de Ferrara. 
duchesse de nemours. 
Cardinal Caraffa. 
Gabriel de Lorges, 
Ambroise Pare, ) 
Andrew Yesalius, j 

RONSARD, 
REMY BeLLEAU, 
DORAT, 

Du Bellay, 

Jacques Amyot, ) tor3 of the iuces 

M. Danesius, ) 

Jacques de la Motte, Abbe de St. Prix. 

Due d'Enghien, 

Marechal de Saint-Andre, 

Due de Nevers, 

Marechal Strozzi, 

Marechal de Brissac, 

Monsieur de Tiielignt, 

Monsieur de Breuil, 

Monsieur de Jarnac, 

Captain Languetot, 

Captain Rambouillet, 

Captain Louis Poy, 

Monsieur Dandelot, the admiral's brother, 

Vicomte du Mont Notre-Dame, 

Sieur de la Curee, 

comte de la rochefoucauld, 

Due de Montpensier, 

Due de Longueville, 

Due de Bouillon, 

Vicomte de Turenne, 



French officers. 



20 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



soldiers of fortune in the 
French service. 



Heinrich Scharfenstein, 

Martin Pilletrouse, 

Frantz Scharfenstein, 

Caesar Annibal Malemort, 

Honore-Joseph Maldent, 

Jean-Chrysostome Procope, 

Victor-Felix Yvonnet, 

Cyrille-Nepomucene Lactance, 

Vittorio-Albani Fracasso, 

Count Egmont, 

Count Horn, 

Count Schwarzbourg, 

Count Mansfield, 

Duke Eric of Brunswick, 

Duke Ernest of Brunswick, 

Field-Marshal de Binnscourt, 

Captain Carondelet, 

Colonel Narvaez, 

Julian Romeron, 

Alonzo de Cazieres, 

Mademoiselle Gertrude, ) ^^ ftt the CMteau du Parcqe 

Philippin, ) 

Jean Pauquet, captain of a company at St. Quentin. 

Guillaume Pauquet, his brother. 

Gudule, Guillaume Pauquet's daughter. 

Maitre Gosseu, a Picard peasant. 

Catherine, his wife. 



officers in the army besieg- 
ing St. Quentin. 



MAEGUEEITE DE VALOIS. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The series of romances in which Dumas has dealt 
with the courts of the later Valois kings, Charles 
IX. and Henri III., — a series of which "La Reine 
Margot," or "Marguerite de Valois," is the first 
chronologically speaking, — describes the main 
events of the period with such substantial accuracy 
that one who reads this great trilogy may be fairly 
said to be studying French history, if not perhaps 
preparing himself to write it. 

From the death of Henri II. through the reigns 
of the three sons of that unhappy monarch, — the 
sickly and ill-fated Franqois II., the cruel, almost 
insane, Charles IX., and the effeminate, irresolute, 
and cowardly Henri III., — the one pervading per- 
sonality in France was that of Catherine de Me'dicis ; 
and as her hatred and fear of Henri of Navarre 
was the mainspring of her policy from the time 
that his character became so developed as to distin- 
guish him from the other princes of the Bourbon 
family, all of whom were adherents of the re- 



22 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

formed religion, and to attract to him the warm 
and enthusiastic devotion of the constantly increas- 
ing Huguenot party, so has Dumas taken that 
hatred and that fear for the theme upon which he 
has constructed three romances which rival, in in- 
tense interest and power to entertain and amuse, 
any that have ever come even from his pen. 

If it was from the lips of Charles that the order 
for the bloody work of St. Bartholomew's Day, 
1572, issued, it was the mind of the queen mother 
that prompted it, and the will of the queen mother 
that forced it from those lips ; and the vast num- 
bers of Huguenots that were massacred in the 
streets of Paris in pursuance of that order were 
sacrificed pitilessly and ruthlessly in the hope that 
in the general carnage the king of Navarre would 
be put out of the way with his co-religionists. 

The assassination of Gaspard de Coligny, the 
brave Admiral, whose services to France had been 
so great, can never cease to be an event of sad and 
mournful interest to all lovers of religious liberty ; 
and the vivid description of the foul deed to be 
found in the following pages derives added interest 
from the fact that the part therein assigned to 
Coconnas was really performed by him. 

M. De Crue has recently published in Paris a 
book entitled, "Ze Parti des Politiques au lendemain 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 23 

de la Saint-Barthelemy" and which has for its sub- 
title, "La Molle et Coconat" which it seems is in 
each instance the more authentic orthography. 

It appears from the researches of M. de Crue that 
our two heroes were even more important person- 
ages than they are represented by Dumas to have 
been. The party of the Politiques occupied a sort 
of middle position between the Catholics and 
Huguenots ; it was originally headed by the Mont- 
morencys, and after them by Francois, Due d'Alen- 
c^on. La Molle, described as dissolute, pious, very 
superstitious, became the confidant of d'Alenqon ; 
and it is said that Charles IX., who detested his 
brother, twice gave the order to strangle La Molle ; 
and that one day he himself, with the Due de Guise 
and other gentlemen, waited in a passage at the 
Louvre for that purpose. La Molle was saved only 
because he entered the room of the Queen of 
Navarre instead of d'Alenqon's. 

Annibal Coconat (or Coconata) is said by M. 
De Crue to have been taken as an associate by 
La Molle to supply personal courage, in which he 
was lacking. They were both secret agents of 
Spain, which power was under Philip II. always 
industriously fomenting the religious troubles in 
France. Charles IX. is quoted as having spoken of 
Coconat thus : " Coconat was a valiant gentleman. 



24 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

but he was wicked; he was one of the wickedest 
men living in my kingdom. I remember having 
heard him say, among other things, when he vaunted 
his part in the Saint Bartholomew, that he had 
bought from the hands of the people thirty Hugue- 
nots in order to have the satisfaction of killing 
them after his own pleasure, which was, first to 
make them renounce their religion with a promise 
to save their lives; this being done, he killed them 
with his poniard cruelly with several cuts." 

This monarch, who was horrified at such "wick- 
edness " and " cruelty," is the same who stood at 
the window of the Louvre on the same occasion, 
shooting at passing Huguenots with his arquebus. 
In 1574 a scheme was formed (by La Molle ?) 
which provided that d'AlenQon was to fly from 
Paris with the King of Navarre, Turenne, and 
Coconat, and put himself at the head of all the 
malcontents of the kingdom, the expectation being 
that Ludwig of Nassau and his army would support 
him, as well as England, Germany, and the Nether- 
lands. The spies of the queen mother, however, 
ferreted out the plot. D'Alengon and the King of 
Navarre were kept prisoners in the Louvre, while 
La Molle and Coconat were arrested. The first was 
looked upon as the head of the conspiracy, Coconat 
merely as an instrument. They were both put to 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 25 

the torture. La Molle, after keeping silent for a 
long while, finally denounced as his accomplices 
Turenne, Coconat, Bouillon, Conde\ and others, but 
did not breathe the name of D'AlenQon. Coconat, 
however, did speak, under torture, of D'Alenc,on 
and Montmorency. 

La Molle was the lover of the Queen of Navarre ; 
the Duchesse de Nevers was one of Coconat's many 
mistresses. Marguerite pleaded for La Molle's par- 
don, but could only obtain a promise that he should 
not have a public execution ; but the preparations 
were hastened, and before the order arrived they 
were both beheaded in the Place de Greve. 

Brautome says that Marguerite and the Duch- 
esse de Nevers secretly disinterred the bodies, and 
had them buried in the Chapel of Saint Martin at 
Montmartre. It was said also that they kept the 
heads of their lovers embalmed. 

A poet of the time composed this epigram for 
La Molle: "Mollis vita fuit, mollior interitus." 

This brief sketch of the results of historical 
research will enable the reader to judge for himself 
how closely Dumas has adhered to fact. 

History has had much to say of Marguerite de 
Valois, Queen of Navarre, — of her fatal beauty 
and her even more fatal levity of character, to call 
it by no harsher name. Dumas has certainly pre- 



26 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

sented her to us here in quite as favorable a light 
as the known facts of her life and character war- 
rant. Our own historian, Motley, has had a word 
to say of her when telling the story of her brother 
Francois's brief experience as Governor-General of 
the Netherlands. Her relations with that brother 
have been commented upon very severely; she 
accompanied him to the Netherlands, where she 
added many names to the list of those whom her 
charms had seduced, — notably that of Don John 
of Austria, the hero of Lepanto. 

It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine a tale 
otherwise than interesting which should have for 
its central figure, or for one of its central figures, the 
jovial, insouciant, captivating, lovable, but withal 
shrewd and calculating, Henri de Bourbon, King of 
Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. of France. Always 
present, a gay and mocking spectre in the minds of 
Catherine de Mddicis and her childless sons, un- 
stable in love and in religion, but always manly 
and brave, generous and loyal, the son of Jeanne 
d'Albret is the true hero of the Yalois Eomances. 



MARGUERITE DE VALOIS. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Period, 1572-1575. 

Charles IX., King of France. 

Henri, Due d'Anjou, j ^ brothers> 

Francois, Due d Alenpon, ) 

Catherine de Medicis, the. Queen Mother. 

Elizabeth, Queen to Charles IX. 

Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. 

Marguerite de Valois, his wife. 

Princess Claude, Duchesse de Lorraine, sister of Marguerite 

de Valois. 
Marie Touchet, mistress of Charles IX. 
Charles, their infant son, afterwards Due d'Angouleme, 
Henri de Lorraine, Due de Guise. 
Duchesse de Nevers, his sister-in-law. 
Baron de Sauve. 
Madame de Sauve, his wife, lady-in-waiting to Catherine de 

Medicis. 
Mademoiselle Dariole, her waiting-woman. 
Gilonne, daughter of Marshal de Matignon, and confidante of 

Marguerite de Valois. 
Madelon, the old nurse of Charles IX. 
Comte Joseph Hyacinthe Boniface de Lerac de la Mole, 

a Huguenot, beloved by Marguerite de Valois. 
Comte Annibal de Coconnas, a Catholic, beloved by the 

Duchesse de Nevers. 



28 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Maitre Cabouche, headsman to the provostry of Paris. 
Francois de Louviers-Maurevel, " the King's Killer." 
Maitre Rene, Florentine, " perfumer to her Majesty the Queen 

Mother." 
Ambroise Pare, surgeon. 

M. de Nancey, Captain of the Guards to Catherine de Medicis. 
Maitre la Huriere, a Catholic, landlord of the Belle Iitoile Inn. 
Gregoire, his servant. 
Madame la Huriere. 

M. de Besme, a German officer, and adherent to the Due de Guise. 
Orthon, page to Henry of Navarre. 
M. de Beaulieu, Governor of Vincennes. 
Captain la Chastro, of the King's Guards. 
Bishop of Cracow, j Ambassadors from PoIand . 
The Palatine Lasco, ) 
Admiral de Coligny, 
Prince de Conde, 
M. de Teligny, 

M. DE MOUY. DE SAINT-PHALE, 

M. de Sancourt, > Huguenots. 

M. de Barthelemy, 

Lambert Mercandon, 

Olivier, his son. 

Madame de Mercandon, 

Le Procureur-General. 

President of the Court at Vincennes- 

Clerk or the Court. 

Mazille, a physician. 



LA DAME DE MONSOREAU. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

In "La Dame de Monsoreau," we find Henri III., 
the third son of Henri II., occupying the throne of 
France. He it was who, as Due d'Anjou, was 
chosen King of Poland, — as related in " Mar- 
guerite de Valois," — and who returned to Paris so 
opportunely as Charles IX. was breathing his last, 
summoned by Catherine de Me'dicis, whose favorite 
son he was. We find him, last and weakest of the 
Yalois, surrounded and ruled by unworthy favor- 
ites, the famous "Mignons;" and much less king 
in fact than any one of half a dozen others. 

The Catholic League has grown in numbers and 
in audacity, and the Guises find a willing tool in 
the king's brother, Francois, Due d'Anjou, formerly 
Due d'Alengon, now, as always, ready to commit 
any treachery and enter into any agreement which 
looks to the placing of a crown on his head. 

The various scenes in the Abbey of Sainte- 
Genevieve will be to many readers among the 
most engrossing, from their historical interest as 
well as from the prominent part taken in them 



30 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

by the inimitable Chicot, the court "jester." If 
Dumas had done nothing else to earn our gratitude, 
it would certainly be due to him in large measure 
for enabling us to make the acquaintance of Chicot, 
whose " jesting " served his master far better than 
the selfish devotion of all his "Mignons." Never 
was a character in history or romance farther re- 
moved from the common conception of a court 
fool; and while he is responsible for some of the 
most amusing and entertaining chapters that were 
ever written, he takes no step, indeed scarce utters 
a word, which has not a definite purpose connected 
with the interests of the king, whose only true 
friend he seems to be ; while at the same time 
he sees him as he is, in all his weakness and 
effeminacy, and estimates him at his true value. 
Whether he is engaged in drinking Gorenflot under 
the table, belaboring the Due de Mayenne while 
he vainly struggles to crawl through a hole too 
small for his famous paunch, or fighting his other 
old enemy, the lawyer Nicolas David, to the death, 
he is always the same Chicot, — cool, shrewd, per- 
fectly self-possessed, brave as a lion, and with an 
inexhaustible store of good-humored persiflage and 
biting wit. 

"The passions in your tales," says Andrew Lang, 
in "Letters to Dead Authors," "are honorable and 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 31 

brave ; the motives are clearly human. Honor, love, 
friendship make the threefold clew your knights 
and dames follow through how delightful a laby- 
rinth of adventures ! " 

How fitly do these words apply to those portions 
of " La Dame de Monsoreau " which are concerned 
with the passion aroused by Diane de Mdridor in 
the heart of that hero of herees, Comte Louis de 
Clermont, called Bussy d'Amboise, and with the 
fatal result of that passion, contributed to by the 
jealousy of Monsoreau, the cowardice of d'Epernon, 
and the inborn, motiveless wickedness of that most 
contemptible of all characters in French history, 
Francois de Yalois, Due d'Anjou ! 

The heroic defence of Bussy d'Amboise against 
the combined attack of Monsoreau and his band of 
ruffians and the cut-throats in the pay of d'Epernon 
long ago took its place at the head of the master- 
pieces of description in its kind. 

Says Mr. Lang, in the same letter quoted from 
above : " I know four good fights of one against a 
multitude in literature. These are the Death of 
Gretir the Strong, the Death of Gunnar of Lithend, 
the Death of Hereward the Wake, and the Death 
of Bussy d'Amboise. We can compare the strokes 
of the heroic fighting times with those described in 
later days ; and upon my word, I do not know that 



32 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

the short sword of Gretir or the bill of Skarphedin 
or the bow of Gunnar was better wielded than the 
rapier of your Bussy or the sword and shield of 
Hereward." 

But in our admiration of the magnificent swords- 
manship, the superb coolness, and the heroic courage 
of the central figure, we must not overlook the 
other elements which add to the power of the 
description and the tense and thrilling interest of 
the scene, — on the one hand, the unselfish devotion 
of Ee*my and the heart-broken despair of Diane ; 
on the other hand, the cold-blooded heartlessness 
and cynicism of d'Anjou, the real instigator of the 
plot against his popular and powerful — indeed, too 
powerful — follower. 

Diane lived ! Her love for Bussy d'Amboise was 
the undying passion of a noble-hearted woman who 
loves but once ; she lived to avenge the murder of 
her lover upon the head of the royal assassin. In 
" The Forty-Five," the third and last of the Valois 
cycle of romances, Dumas has followed and de- 
scribed the course of her vengeance to its fearful 
end. 



LA DAME DE MONSOREAIL 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1578. 

Henri III., King of France. 

Francois, Due d'Anjou, his brother, formerly Due d'Alenpon. 

Aurilly, a lute-player, the confidant of Due d'Anjou. 

Louise de Lorraine, wife of Henri III. 

Catherine de Medicis, the Queen Mother. 

Chicot, the King's jester, a Gascon gentleman. 

Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre. 

Mademoiselle de Montmorency, " la Fosseuse," his mistress 

M. Agrippa d'Aubigne, his friend. 

Comte Louis de Clermont, called Bussy d'Amboise. 

M. Charles Balzac d'Antragues, 1 friends of B 

Francois d'Audie, Vicomte de Bibeirae, J- 1, * 1 • 

M. DE LlVAROT, J 

Francois d'Epinay de Saint-Luc, favorite of Henri III. 

Jeanne de Cosse, his wife. 

Marechal de Brissac, her father. 

M. Bryan de Monsoreau, chief huntsman. 

Diane de Meridor, his wife, "La Dame de Monsoreau," in 

love witli Bussy d'Amboise. 
Baron de Meridor, Diane's father. 
Bemy le Haudouin, a young surgeon. 
Gertrude, Diane's servant. 
M. d'Epernon, 

M. DE SCHOMBEEG, 

M. de Maugiron, 

Jacques de Levis, Comte de Quelus, 



34 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



Leaguers, conspiring 
against Henri III. 



M. de Crillon, an officer of the king. 

Henri, Due de Guise, 

Cardinal de Lorraine, 

Due de Mayenne, 

Duchesse de Montpensier, his sister, 

Maitre Nicolas David, an advocate, 

M. Pierre de Gondy, 

M. LE GOUVERNEUR D'AUNIS, 

M. de Castillon, 

Baron de Lusignan, 

M. Cruce, 

M. Leclerc, 

Chancellor de Morvilliers. 

M. de Nancey, Captain of the Guards. 

Joseph Foulon, superior of the Convent of Sainte Genevieve. 

Claude Bonhomet, host of the " Corne d'Abondance." 

M. Bernouillet, of the hostelry of La Croix. 

Maitre la Huriere, of the Belle litoile Inn. 

Brother Gorenflot. 



THE FORTY-FIVE. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Some six or seven years elapsed between the tragical 
death of Bussy d'Amboise, as told in the concluding 
chapters of " La Dame de Monsoreau," and the 
coming to Paris of the famous Gascon body-guard 
of Henri III., known in history as the Forty-Five, 
with which this tale opens. 

The vengeance wrought by Diane de Meridor 
upon the prince, who was the instigator of the 
concerted attack upon Bussy, is the theme from 
which the " Forty-Five " derives most of its ro- 
mantic interest. Diane, the lovely, lovable, loving 
woman, has become a cold, loveless, pitiless statue, 
living only to avenge her murdered lover; but 
she is still beautiful, almost superhumanly beauti- 
ful, — so beautiful that Henri de Joyeuse is lost 
in hopeless love of her, and that the perfidious Due 
d'Anjou, the object of her relentless pursuit, thirsts 
to possess her, and by his very passion makes her 



36 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

task easy. History records that he died, from an 
■unexplained cause, at Chateau-Thierry on the date 
here assigned. 

The acquaintance so pleasantly begun in the 
earlier story, with Chicot, is here renewed with 
even greater delight. Disguised as Maitre Eobert 
Briquet, to escape the vengeance of the Due de 
Mayenne, he is no less original and amusing than 
in his proper person, — no less active in his care for 
the interests of the somewhat unappreciative and 
ungrateful master, to whom his faithful attachment 
never varies. 

The whole episode of the jester's mission to the 
Court of Navarre — his hazardous journey, his brief 
stay at Nerac, the " hunt " which ended at Cahors, 
and his narration of his experiences to the king on 
his return — would alone be sufficient to stamp the 
"Forty-Five " as one of the very best of our author's 
romances. In all his varied experiences, Chicot 
never found his match in shrewdness and finesse 
till he crossed swords with Henri of Navarre. And 
how frankly he acknowledged his defeat, and how 
warmly each appreciated the other's merits! 

The events which led to the journey of the Due 
d'Anjou to Flanders with the hope of wearing a 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 37 

crown at last, the course of William of Orange 
towards the French prince, and the abortive attempt 
upon Antwerp, are sufficiently touched upon in the 
body of the story. Francois, after all his longing 
and scheming, died uncrowned ; and it may be 
doubted whether he would ever have ascended the 
French throne, even if he had outlived his brother. 
Had he done so, it is safe to say that the crimes 
and shortcomings of his brothers would have been 
almost forgotten, and the odium which attaches to 
the memory of the last degenerate Yalois kings 
would have been concentrated upon him. 

The constant growth of the Holy League under 
the leadership of the Guises, and with the almost 
avowed patronage of Philip II. of Spain, is interest- 
ingly woven into the narrative ; perhaps we need 
not marvel at the success of a cause which had for 
its high priestess so charming a personality as the 
heroine of the celebrated golden scissors, — that ener- 
getic intrigante, the clever and fascinating Duchesse 
de Montpensier. 

It is interesting to know the estimation in which 
these romances were held by their author's com- 
patriot, George Sand, herself a novelist of the first 
rank. 



38 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Says Andrew Lang in his "Essays in Little:" 
" M. Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just 
before her death, and found Dumas's novel, 'Les 
Quarante-Cinq,' lying on her table. He expressed 
his wonder that she was reading it for the first 
time. ' For the first time ! ' said she ; ' why, this is 
the fifth or sixth time I have read " Les Quarante- 
Cinq" and the others. When I am ill, anxious, 
melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me 
against moral and physical troubles like a book of 
Dumas.' " 



THE FORTY-FIVE, 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1585. 

Henri ill., King of France. 

Louise de Lorraine, his wife. 

Francois, Due d'Anjou, brother of Henri III. 

Aurilly, the confidant of Due d'Anjou. 

Catherine de Medicis, the Queen Mother. 

Chicot, the King's jester, passing under the name of Robert 

Briquet. 
Anne, Due de Joyeuse, Grand Admiral of France. 
Henri de Joyeuse, Comte du Bouchage, ) j. w-jHjg-- 
Francois, Cardinal de Joyeuse, ) 

Nogaret de Lavalette, Due d'J^pemon. 

COMTE DE SAINT-AlGNAN. 

M. de Loignac, Captain of the Forty-Five Guardsmen. 

VlCOMTE ErNATJTON DE CaRMAINGES, ^ 

M. de Sainte-Malinb, 

M. de Chalabre, 

Percudas de Pincornat, 

Pertinax de Montcrabeau, 

Eustache de Miradoux, 

Hector de Biran, 

M. de Crillon, Colonel of the French Guards. 

M. de Vesin, commanding the garrison at Cahors. 

Diane de Meridor. 

Remy le Haudouin. 

The Superior of the Convent of the Hospitalieres. 



of the " Forty-Five. 



40 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Henri, Due de Guise, 

Due de Mayenne, 

Duchesse de Montpensier, his sister, 

M. de Mayneville, 

M. de Cruce, V Leaguers. 

Bussy-Leclerc, 

M. de Marteau, 

Nicolas Poulain, lieutenant to the 

provost of Paris, 
President Brisson of the Council. 
M. de Salcede. 

Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre. 
Marguerite, his wife. 

M. DE TURENNE, 1 

M. D'Aubiac, j- of the Court of Navarre. 

M. DUPLESSIS-DE MORNAY, J 

Mademoiselle de Montmorency, " la Fosseuse," mistress of 

the King of Navarre. 
William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. 
The Burgomaster of Antwerp. 
Goes, a "Flemish sailor. 
Dom Modeste Gorenflot, 
Brother Eusebe, 

Brother Jacques, \ of the Priory of the Jacobins. 

Brother Borromee, 
Brother Panurge, 
Maitre Bonhomet, host of the "Corne d'Abondance" inn. 
Maitre Fournichon, host of " The Sword of the Brave Cheva« 

Her." 
Dame Fournichon, his wife. 

Lardille de Chavantrade, wife of Eustache de Miradoux. 
Militor de Chavantrade, her son. 

MAiTKE M.TON, ) b ; s . 

Jean Friard, ) 
Miron, a Physician. 



THE THREE MUSKETEERS 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

No other one of all the works of the elder Dumas, 
with the possible exception of "Monte Cristo," is 
so widely known and read, and so universally popu- 
lar among English-speaking people, as that which 
relates the thrilling adventures of the " Three Mus- 
keteers" and their friend and brother, the clever 
Gascon, D'Artagnan, who has held, for many years, 
an undisputed place in the very front rank of heroes 
of romance. In many countries and languages, and 
upon the stage, the bravery and wit of the four 
inseparables have enthralled and fascinated more 
than one generation; and countless readers yet to 
come will find enjoyment in the most striking ex- 
emplification of the marvellous story-telling powers 
of the great writer, of whom a favorite essayist 
of our own day has said: "The past and present 
are photographed imperishably on his brain; he 
knows the manners of all ages and all countries, 
the names of all the arms that men have used, all 
the garments they have worn, all the dishes they 
have tasted, all the terms of all professions from 
swordsmanship to coach-building." 



42 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Those readers who find a never-failing source of 
enjoyment in what Macaulay might have called 
the audacia Gasconica of D'Artagnan, and in the 
simple-hearted, good-humored, unquestioning loy- 
alty of Porthos, the Titan ; who never tire of 
travelling with the famous four from Paris to 
London to save the honor of Anne of Austria; 
Who follow with bated breath the gradual perver- 
sion and corruption by Milady of the Puritan 
Felton, and shudder at the vengeance wreaked 
upon her by those to whom her hideous crimes 
have brought unhappiness and suffering, — all such 
may take comfort in the assurance that every pain- 
ful or pleasurable emotion they feel has been felt 
and acknowledged by those whose judgment in 
matters literary we love to respect. The list is a 
long one of eminent writers who have borne testi- 
mony to the enjoyment they have taken in the 
doughty deeds of the heroes of these volumes. 

" Think of a whole day in bed and a good novel 
for a companion ! " says Thackeray, in his " Kound- 
about Papers." "The Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell 
me stories from dawn to night ! . . . Suppose 
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a 
noiseless swagger, curling their mustaches. ... Of 
your heroic heroes, I think Monseigneur Athos, 
Count de la Fere, is my favorite. I have read 
about him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost 
contentment of mind. He has passed through how 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 43 

many volumes ? Forty ? Fifty ? I wish, for my 
part, there were a hundred more, and would never 
tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing ruffians, 
and running scoundrels through the midriff with 
his most graceful rapier. Ah, Athos, Porthos, and 
Aramis, you are a magnificent trio ! " 

Eobert Louis Stevenson and Hay ward, the clever 
essayist, have put themselves, unhesitatingly, on 
record as ardent admirers of Dumas and his chiv- 
alrous heroes ; and Andrew Lang surrenders to the 
Charm quite as completely, and in his most grace* 
ful manner, in one of his "Letters to Dead 
Authors." 

" You gave us," he writes, " the valor of 
D'Artagnan, the strength of Porthos, the melan- 
choly nobility of Athos : Honor, Chivalry, and 
Friendship. I declare your characters are real 
people to me, and old friends. . . . The reproach of 
being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame 
for a moment. The shadow of this tyranny will 
soon be overpast, and men and women — and above 
all, boys — will laugh and weep over the page of 
Alexandre Dumas. Like Scott himself, you take 
us captive in our childhood. I remember a very 
idle little boy who was busy with the 'Three 
Musketeers' when he should have been occupied 
with ' Wilkins's Latin Prose.' ' Twenty years after ' 
(alas ! and more) he is still constant to that gallant 
company, and at this very moment is breathlessly 



44 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

wondering whether Grimaud will steal M. de Beau- 
fort out of the Cardinal's prison." 

It may be said of this and of the other volumes 
of the group in which D'Artagnan is a principal 
figure, as indeed it may be said of all the historical 
tales of this incomparable writer, that the interest 
is greatly intensified by the knowledge that in all 
the main features, as well as in many details, the 
narrative deals with well-vouched historical facts, 
and with personages who have actually existed, 
and whose portraits are generally drawn with great 
faithfulness. 

The leading motive of this tale, Cardinal Kiche- 
lieu's bitter enmity to Anne of Austria and to her 
bosom-friend and confidante, Madame de Chevreuse, 
is a well-authenticated fact. The same is true of 
the king's lack of affection for his wife, which 
originated in her apparent partiality for his brother 
Gaston, who was at first known as Due d'Anjou, 
afterwards as Due d'Orle*ans, and was the father of 
" La Grande Mademoiselle." The disappointment of 
Louis XIII. at the queen's long-continued sterility 
contributed to alienate his affection from her; but 
the powerful influence of the king's master, the 
omnipotent cardinal, was the principal factor in 
keeping the husband and wife apart. 

Eichelieu's hatred for the young queen dated 
from an early period after her arrival in France, — 
when the queen mother, Marie de Mddicis, although 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 45 

somewhat- discredited, was still a power to be reck- 
oned with, and in the event of the king's death 
without issue, would again become regent during 
the minority of Gaston, a contingency equally to be 
dreaded by the queen and the cardinal. Louis was 
ill, how ill no one knew; and the cardinal deter- 
mined on a bold stroke. He arrayed himself in the 
costume of a cavalier — he was then young and 
handsome — and paid a visit to Anne of Austria 
one evening at the hour when her ladies generally 
left her alone ; he desired to speak with her, so he 
said, on affairs of State. Unattended except by her 
old Spanish maid, she received him graciously, and 
was at once informed by him that his real purpose 
was to speak of her own affairs. 

He told her that the king was seriously ill, that 
his physician had told him that, although death 
was not imminent, he could never recover ; and he 
thereupon forcibly impressed upon her how deplor- 
able would be her situation if the king should die 
without an heir of his body. 

She was painfully surprised, but replied to his 
representations that their fate was in God's hands, 
and nothing more was to be said. 

" Yes," said the cardinal, smiling ; " but God said 
to his creatures: 'Help yourself and heaven will 
help you.' " 

Being pressed by the queen to divulge his real 
meaning, he finally did so, and avowed his love for 



46 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

her as a justification for the audacious proposals he 
dared to make. The queen- "dissembled her con- 
tempt, and determined to see how far the cardinal's 
passion would carry him." 

She demanded time for reflection, and made an 
appointment with him for the next night; and in 
the meantime, in concert with Madame de Chevreuse, 
concocted a scheme to make him ridiculous. When 
he appeared the next night, the queen said that she 
desired to put his affection to the proof, and there- 
fore demanded that he should dance a saraband for 
her in the costume of a Spanish buffoon. To her 
surprise he at once consented, on condition that she 
should be the only spectator, and that the music 
should be furnished by a retainer of his own. 

The following night, Madame de Chevreuse, 
Vauthier, and Beringhen were carefully stowed 
away behind a screen. The violinist appeared, 
followed shortly by the cardinal himself, arrayed in 
green velvet breeches and doublet, with silver bells 
at his knees and castanets in his hands. 

At a gesture from the queen, " he began to perform 
the saraband, capering about the room and waving 
his arms in due form. Unluckily, the very serious- 
ness with which the cardinal went about it was so 
absurd to look upon that the queen could not keep 
a sober face, and burst out laughing. A prolonged 
shriek of laughter came from behind the screen, like 
an echo of hers. The cardinal saw that what he 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 47 

had taken for a special favor was only a practical 
joke, and he left the room in a furious rage. . . . 
Poor fools they were to play thus with the cardinal- 
duke's wrath ! To be sure, that wrath was still an 
unknown quantity. After the death of Bouteville, 
Montmorency, Chalais, and Cinq-Mars, they cer- 
tainly would not have risked such a dangerous 
pleasantry. 

"While they were laughing at its success the 
cardinal was vowing everlasting hatred to Anne of 
Austria and Madame de Chevreuse." 

When the Duke of Buckingham, the magnificent 
and accomplished courtier and favorite of Charles 
I., came to the French court as negotiator of the 
projected alliance between Charles, then Prince of 
Wales, and the king's sister, Henrietta Maria, he 
fell at once a victim to the charms of the queen, 
and made no secret of his infatuation. The jealous 
hatred of the cardinal was quick to seize this means 
of annoying the woman who had so deeply wounded 
his self-esteem. His emissaries watched every move- 
ment of the queen and the ambassador, and by his 
means devices of all sorts were resorted to, and 
traps laid to dishonor her. As the difficulties in 
the way of meeting the object of his affections, 
except by stealth, became greater, the duke's expe- 
dients to overcome them became ever more daring 
and foolhardy, and in all of them he found a zeal- 
ous coadjutor in Madame de Chevreuse, — " lovely. 



48 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

clever, and audacious, . . . ready to enter heart and 
soul into any intrigue, no matter how whimsical 
or hare-brained." 

The duke prolonged the negotiations for the 
marriage as long as he could, and when at last he 
was obliged to leave France with the new queen of 
England, he used all his power to obtain a perma- 
nent appointment as ambassador to Louis XIII. 

"He set fire to two great kingdoms," says one 
chronicler, " staking the future of England, whose 
ruin he nearly compassed, and his own life, which 
he finally lost, against the chance of remaining in 
France as ambassador, in order to be near Anne of 
Austria, in spite of the inflexible determination of 
Eichelieu." 

The episode of the diamond studs, in which 
D'Artagnan's passion for Madame Bonacieux leads 
to our heroes' playing so prominent a part, actually 
occurred, substantially as here related : the queen 
bestowed the jewels upon the infatuated duke ; the 
snare was laid by the cardinal, and Buckingham 
gave a most convincing proof of his devotion when 
he put an embargo upon all the ports of England 
while his own jeweller was making fac-similes to 
replace two of the pendants which had been cut off 
by "Milady Clarik." 

It is equally true that the murderous deed of 
the fanatic Felton occurred at a moment most 
opportunely chosen to serve the ends of Louis XIIL, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 49 

— that is to say, of Eichelieu. The joy of both at 
the death of the duke was exuberant and openly 
expressed; and Anne of Austria believed, to her 
dying day, that her relentless foe inspired the 
deed. 

A short time before the tragic death of Bucking- 
ham, Eichelieu had dealt a deadly blow at the 
queen's credit, and had struck dismay into the 
hearts of all his enemies by his characteristically 
clever manipulation of the conspiracy of Chalais, 
in which Gaston d' Orleans and the two illegitimate 
sons of Henri IV. by Gabriel d'Estrdes were involved. 
By promising clemency to Chalais, he forced from 
him a confession, in which he denounced the queen 
and Gaston as parties to a plot to assassinate king 
and cardinal, and to marry one another. The results 
of this affair were the disgrace of the queen, the 
unwilling marriage of Gaston to Mademoiselle de 
Guise, and the exile of Madame de Chevreuse, 
whose stolen visits to Paris and correspondence 
with Aramis under the name of Marie Mich on 
form one of the brightest episodes in the "Three 
Musketeers." 

In the succeeding volumes of this cycle, the 
reader will fall in again with the Gascon and his 
tried and true friends, and follow their fortunes 
through stirring and troublous times, when they 
had become to some extent involved in the political 
movements of the period ; but will never find them 
more attractive or more diverting than in the early 



50 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

days of their defensive and offensive alliance, when 
they thought no more of casting defiance in the 
teeth of the great cardinal himself than of breakfast- 
ing in the bastion of Saint-Gervais, under the guns 
of Eochelle, to win a wager, — when, in short, they 
made for themselves the reputation for dauntless 
courage, invincible prowess, and chivalrous gal- 
lantry which passed into a tradition at the French 
court. 



THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1626-1628 

Louis XIII., King of France. 
Anne of Austria., his wife. 

Arm and Jean Duplessis, Cardinal Richelieu, Minister of State. 
George Vllliers, Duke of Buckingham. 
Patrick, his confidential servant. 
M. de Treville, Captain of the King's Musketeers. 
Due de la Tremouille, commanding the Cardinal's Guards. 
D'Artagnan, a Gascon adventurer, afterwards lieutenant in the 
King's Musketeers. 
thos, ^ urj^gg Musketeers," serving under M. de 

* 0MHM ' I Treville. 

Aramis, J 

CoilTE DE RoCHEFORT, ^ 

Coaite de Wardes, V in the service of Richelieu. 

Lady de Winter, J 

Duchesse de Chevreuse, the friend of Anne of Austria. 

M. le Comte de Soissons, 

Due d'Elboeuf, 

CoiiTE d'Harcourt, 

M. de Baradas, 

DUC DE LONGUEVILLE, 
CoilTE DE LA RoCHE-GUYON, 
CoilTE DE CRAMAIL, 

Chevalier de Souveray, 
M. de Liancourt. 



f of the French Court. 



52 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



French officers at the Siege of 
Rochelle. 



M. de Seguier, keeper of the Seals. 
M. de Bassompierre, 

M. DE ScHOMBERG, 

Due d'Angouleme, 

M. DE ToiRAS, 

La Chesnaye, confidential valet of Louis XIII. 

Donna Estefania, the Spanish confidant of Anne of Austria. 

M. Laporte, the queen's servant. 

Madame de Guitaut, ^ 

Madame de Sable, I . . 

Madame de Montbazon, f m atte » dance ™ Aime of Austria. 

Madame de Guemenee, J 

Madame de Surgis, ) spies of Richelieu, attending on Anne 

Madame de Lannoy, ) of Austria. 

Jacques Michel Bonacieux. . 

Constance, his wife, in love with D'Artagnan. 

M. Coquenard, procurator. 

Madame Coquenard, in love with Porthos. 

Grimaud, servant to Athos. 

Mousqueton, Porthos's servant. 

Bazin, servant to Aramis. 

Planchet, D'Artagnan's servant. 

M. d'Essart, brother-in-law of M. de Treville, commanding a 

company of the King's Guards. 
Sieur de la Coste, an ensign in the King's Guards. 
M. de Montaran, of the Musketeers. 
M. Duhallter, commanding a company of guards. 
M. de Busigny, of the light horse. 
M. de Cavois, j c tains b the Cardinal > s Guards> 
La Houdiniere, ) 
M. de Jussac, 
M. de Cahusac, 

M. DE Bl CARAT, 

M. DE Bernajoux, 

Vitray, a messenger of Cardinal Richelieu. 



of the Cardinal's Guards. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 53 

Lubin, lackey of Comte de Wardes. 

Brisemont, a soldier. 

Eourreau, a lackey. 

Godeau, Purveyor of the Musketeers. 

The Executioner of Lille. 

The Superior of the Carmelite Convent at Bethune. 

The Curate op Montdidier. 

The Principal of Amiens, superior of the Jesuits. 

M. d'Artagnan, the elder, ) 

Madame d'Artagnan, J ^'Artagnan's parents. 

Host of the Jolly Miller. 

Host of the Golden Lily. 

Host of the Great St. Martin Tavern. 

Host of the Red Dovecot. 

Lord de Winter, brother-in-law of Lady de Winter. 

Kitty, Lady de Winter's maid. 

Jackson, secretary of Buckingham, 

Lieutenant John Eelton, a Puritan in the service of Lord 

de Winter, afterwards Buckingham's assassin. 
O'Reilly, a goldsmith. 
Captain Butler, commanding an English sloop. 



TWENTY YEARS AFTER. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

" Twenty years after " the concluding scenes of 
the " Three Musketeers " bring the reader to the 
year 1648, — the year which saw the beginning of 
the burlesque wars of the Fronde in France, and the 
grim and tragical close of the Civil War in Eng- 
land, with the trial and execution of Charles I., — 
D'Artagnan, still the typical Gascon, still lieutenant 
of Musketeers after twenty years of service, and 
somewhat inclined to repine at the ingratitude of 
Anne of Austria, the powerful Regent, in leaving 
so long unrewarded the valuable services rendered 
to Anne of Austria, the persecuted and despised 
queen, is quick to discern an opportunity to repeat 
the exploits of the early days. 

With that object in view he sets out from Paris in 
search of his former companions. At Noisy he finds 
Aramis, who is now known as Monsieur l'Abbe' 
d'Herblay, but whose sanctity is still largely flavored 
with worldliness, and whose affections have been 
transferred from Madame de Chevreuse to Madame 
la Duchesse de Longueville, sister of the "great" 



56 INTRODUCTOEY NOTE. 

Conde". She was the daughter of the beautiful 
Charlotte de Montmorency (matre pulchra filia 
pulchrior), and was born in the donjon at Vin- 
cennes ; as she was the heart and soul of the 
Fronde, our hero found her lover little minded to 
draw his sword for Mazarin. On the confines of 
Picardy, on one of the estates from which he derives 
his high-sounding appellation of Monsieur du Vallon 
de Bracieux de Pierrefonds, lives Porthos, the giant, 
bursting with ambition to be created a baron, but 
still the same faithful, trusting, good-humored soul, 
asking but to follow wherever his cleverer friends 
may lead. With him D'Artagnan makes rendez- 
vous at Paris, and departs for Blois, where he finds 
his former companion-in-arms, the misanthropic and 
melancholy, but noble-minded Athos, transformed 
into the Comte de la Fere. With his plebeian 
name he has laid aside his tendency to indulge 
inordinately in wine, and has become the perfect 
type of a French gentleman in the highest sense of 
the words. Dwelling on his estate of Bragelonne, 
near Blois, he is rearing his son (from whom the 
concluding work of this great series takes its 
name) upon his own pattern, to emulate his virtues 
and his accomplishments. 

Our gallant friends, always one in heart and 
purpose, though sometimes nominally enlisted on 
opposite sides, count for much in the opening 
scenes of the extraordinary uprising against Maz- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 57 

arin, the Italian minister and master, if not the 
spouse, of the Spanish Queen-Eegent, Anne of 
Austria. Once more, too, the reader is taken across 
the Channel, and made to witness, at close quarters, 
the final scenes in the terrible drama which was 
enacted on English soil. 

A curious, unique episode, and impossible of 
occurrence in any other country than France, was 
the "War of the Fronde," — a war which, in the 
words of Voltaire, "except for the names of the 
King of France, the great Conde', and the capital 
of the kingdom, would have been as ridiculous as 
that of the Barberini ; " a war in which no one 
knew why he was in arms, and in which every 
prominent actor changed sides so frequently that 
one's brain whirls with the attempt to follow the 
course of events ; a war of couplets rather than of 
firearms, with women for leaders of the various 
factions, and cabals made and unmade by the 
exigencies of love affairs." 

The Duchesse de Longueville shared with " La 
Grande Mademoiselle," the daughter of Gaston, 
Due d'Orle'ans, the honor of being the most promi- 
nent Frondeuse. Mademoiselle is said to have 
trained the guns with her own hands upon the 
king's troops at the so-called "Battle of Saint- 
Antoine." The Due de la Eochefoucauld, who 
was wounded in that affair, wrote to Madame de 
Longueville : — 



58 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

" Pour meriter son coeur, pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, 
J'ai fait la guerre aux rois ; je l'aurai faite aux dieux." * 

In the memoirs of Mademoiselle appears a letter 
from her father, Gaston, addressed to "Mesdames 
les Comtesses, Mardchales de camp in the army of 
my daughter now in the field against Mazarin." 

These memoirs of Mademoiselle, with those of 
Madame de Motteville, one of the queen's ladies- 
in-waiting, and of the Cardinal de Ketz, who figures 
in these volumes as the coadjutor Archbishop of 
Paris, M. de G-ondy, are the principal authorities 
for this period ; they were the main reliance of 
Voltaire in writing those portions of the "Siecle 
de Louis XIV." which deal with the Fronde. There 
can be no more striking testimony to the extreme 
closeness with which Dumas adheres to the facts of 
history in the ground-work of his romances than is 
afforded by a perusal of Voltaire's chapters upon 
the period covered by this narrative. Save for the 
exploits of the famous four, " Twenty Years After " 
might fairly be called a history of the early days 
of the Fronde, so closely does the author adhere to 
the historical sequence of events and their effect, 
to say nothing of his accuracy in matters of detail. 
The demonstration against M. Broussel and the 
other councillors during the "Te Deum" for the 

* To win her love, to delight her lovely eyes, I have taken 
up arms against the king ; I would have done the same against 
the gods. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 59 

victory of Lens ; the " day of the barricades ; " the 
queen's inclination to be obstinate ; the final flight 
to Saint-Germain, and the scarcity of bedding there ; 
the secession of the Prince de Conti and M. de 
Longueville from the party of Mazarin ; the battle 
between Conde\ with eight thousand troops, and a 
hundred thousand bourgeois at Charenton, with the 
unwarlike conduct of the coadjutor's Corinth regi- 
ment, — these are by no means the only occurrences 
related in these pages which rest upon unquestion- 
able authority. 

The Due de Beaufort, grandson of Henri IV. and 
Gabrielle d'Estr^es, is one of the most picturesque 
figures of the period, even though his character 
was somewhat unstable. Not only is his escape 
from Vincennes described here with substantial 
accuracy, but the " roi des halles" as he was called 
by the people who adored him, is himself pictured 
to the very life, — even to his peculiar facility in 
misusing words after the style of Mrs. Malaprop. 
It is told of him that he said one day of Madame 
de Grignan, who was in mourning: "I met Ma- 
dame de Grignan to-day, and she looked very 
lubrique" (dissolute), — meaning to say lugubre 
(melancholy). She retaliated when she heard of 
it, by saying, pointing to a German nobleman who 
was present: "He is as like the Due de Beaufort 
as one drop of water like another, except that he 
speaks French better than the duke." The well- 



60 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

known niggardliness of the thrifty Mazarin was a 
fair subject for M. de Beaufort's wit ; and the short 
allowance of bed-linen on which the young king 
was kept by him is well authenticated. 

The chapter which describes the meeting at the 
house of Scarron is particularly interesting for the 
glimpse it gives us of " the beautiful Indian," Made- 
moiselle Francois d'Aubigne\ She it was who be- 
came Madame Scarron, and having been introduced 
into the royal circle as governess of the king's 
children by Madame de Montespan, at last sup- 
planted her patroness in the affections of her august 
sovereign ; and for thirty years ruled the kingdom 
of France over the shoulders of the monarch, whose 
unacknowledged wife she was. 

It may be remarked, parenthetically, that the 
incident related by Athos to Madame de Chevreuse 
in connection with the birth of Eaoul de Bragelonne 
is based upon an actual occurrence in the life of 
that somewhat eccentric lady. 

Voltaire calls attention to the striking contrast, 
as exemplified in their widely different methods of 
rebelling against constituted authority, between the 
national characteristics of the English, " who entered 
into their civil troubles with melancholy implaca- 
bility and fury which was carefully thought out 
beforehand ; who took their king in battle, brought 
him before a court of justice, interrogated him, con- 
demned him to death, and executed him publicly 



INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 61 

with the utmost decorum and regard for the forms 
of law," and those of the French, "who plunged 
into rebellion from mere caprice and with a smile 
on their lips," under the leadership of beautiful 
women who used their charms as a means of 
seducing their opponents. Witness the intrigue 
between Madame de Longueville and Mare'chal 
Turenne. 

This contrast has never been more strikingly 
brought out than in these volumes, by the gifted 
author who has so illumined and enlivened, with 
his marvellous art, many of the most entertaining 
and engrossing periods of French history that the 
history itself is made to possess tenfold interest, 
just as the zest of the romance is enhanced by the 
historical accuracy of the facts upon which it is 
built. 

In the first of his " Eoundabout Papers," Thack- 
eray tells of a visit to Chur in the Grisons, and of 
a boy whom he fell in with in his walks, so absorbed 
in a book he was reading as to be utterly oblivious 
to aught else. 

"What was it that so fascinated the young stu- 
dent as he stood by the river-shore ? Not the Pons 
Asinorum. What book so delighted him, and blinded 
him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not 
care to see the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more 
tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with 
their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round 



62 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

the fountain ! What was the book ? Do you sup- 
pose it was Li vy, or the Greek grammar? No; it 
was a novel that you were reading, you lazy, not 
very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy ! It was 
D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or 
almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First's 
head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf 
cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under 
water (I mention the novels I like best myself — 
novels without love or talking, or any of that sort 
of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escap- 
ing, robbery, and rescuing) — cutting himself out of 
the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte 
Cristo ! . . . Dumas ! thou brave, kind, gal- 
lant old Alexandre ! I hereby offer thee homage 
and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I 
have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours 
of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house 
fighting for the volumes." 

And again he says : " I think of the prodigal 
banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has 
invited me, with thanks and wonder. To what a 
series of splendid entertainments he has treated me ! 
Where does he find the money for these prodigious 
feasts ? " 

In the genial company of the author of " Esmond," 
we need not blush to enjoy the " prodigious feast " 
of adventures — amusing, thrilling, and tragical — 
which befall the gallant Frenchmen on both sides 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 63 

of the channel. The old tie, formed twenty years 
before in the ranks of the musketeers, strengthened 
by lapse of time, by their chivalrous sympathy for 
fallen grandeur in the person of the ill-fated Eng- 
lish monarch, by the shadow of the terrible scene at 
Armentieres, and its sequel in the relentless hatred 
of Mordaunt, Milady's worthy son, — the old tie, 
we say, was too strong to be even strained by the 
wiles of the low-born Mazarin; so that, whether 
Frondeurs or Cardinalists in name, they are always 
true brothers-in-arms. 



TWENTY YEAKS AFTER. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, The Regency of Anne of Austria, 1648-1649. 

Anne op Austria. 

Louis XIV., at the age of ten. 

His Eminence Cardinal Mazarin, Prime Minister of Prance. 

Bernouin, his valet. 

Laporte, attendant of the young King. 

Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde. 

Due de Chatillon, serving under him. 

Marechal de Grammont. 

CoMTE DE GUICHE, his SOU. 

M. d'Arminges, preceptor of Comte de Guiche. 

Gaston, Due d'Orleans, the King's uncle, 

Duchesse d'Orleans, 

La Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston of Orleans. 

Princesse de Conde, 

Marechal de Villeroy, 

Marechal de Meilleraie, 

Pontrailles, his aide-de-camp. 

M. de Plamarens, 

Chancellor Seguier, 

Abbe de la Riviere, 

Chevalier de Coislin, 

Madame de Motteville, 

Socratin, her sister, 

Madame de Bregy, |. the Queen's ladies. 

Mademoiselle de Beaumont, 

Madame Beauvais, 



. of the Court 



6Q LIST OF CHAKACTEKS. 

Beeinghen, the Queen's first valet de chambre. 

M. d'^meey, Superintendent of Finances. 

M. Blancmesnil, President of the Parliament. 

M. du Teemblay, Governor of the Bastille. 

M. de Chavigny, Governor of Yincennes Prison. 

La Kamee, j officers at vinceniies 

M. de Poins, ) 

M. d'Abtagnan, lieutenant in the King's Musketeers. 

M. de Bellieee, 

M. du Yeegee. ,«■ 1 i 

_. * : Musketeers. 

M. de Cambon, 

M. DE LlLLEBONNE, . 

M. de Guitaut, captain of the Queen's Guards. 

M. de Comminges, lieutenant of the Queen's Guards. 

M. de Saint-Laueent, of the Queen's Guards. 

M. de Yillequiee, captain of the King's Guards. 

Nogent Beautin, the Court Pool. 

Comte de la Peee (formerly called Athos). 

Vicomte de Beagelonne, his son. 

Chevaliee d'Heeblay (Aramis). 

M. du Yallon de Beacieux de Piebeeeonds (Porthos). 

Mousqueton, his servant. 

Mademoiselle Louise de la Yalliebe. 

Madame de Saint-Bemy, her mother. 

Abbe Scaeeon. 

Chaupeeeois, his servant. 

Mademoiselle Feancoise D'Aubigne, afterwards Madame 

Scarron and Madame de Maintenon. 
Mademoiselle Paulet 
M. Menage, 
m. de scudeey. 
Mademoiselle de Scudeey. 
La Beuyeee, 
Baethois, 



j soldiers on guard at Rueil. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 67 

The Curate op Bethune. 
The Executioner of Bethune. 
Dame Nanette, servant of Councillor Broussel. 
M. Perez, landlord of Bedford's tavern. 
FROKDEURS. 

Due de Beaufort, grandson of Henri IV. 

DUCHESSE DE LoNGUEYILLE. 
DUCHESSE DE ChEYREUSE. 

Dec de Loxgueyille. 
Drc de Chevreese. 
Prince de Conti. 
Due d'Elbcbuf. 
Due de Bouillon. 
Marechal de la Mothe. 
M. de Luyxes. 
Marquis de Yitry. 
Prince de Marclllac. 
Marquis de Noirmoutiers. 

COMTE DE ElESQUE. 

Marquis de Laig-ues. 

CoilTE DE MONTRESOR. 

Marquis de Sevigne. 
M. de Brissac. 
M. de Chanleu. 

Abbe Jean - Erancois de Gondy, the Coadjutor, afterwards 
Cardinal de Ketz. 

CoilTE DE ROCHEFORT. 

Councillor Broussel. 

Louvteres, his son. 

Chevalier d'Humeres. 

Planchet, formerly D'Artagnan's servant, now a confectioner. 

Bazin, beadle at Notre Dame. 

Priests of St. Merri, St. Sulpice, and St. Eustache. 

Maillard, a mendicant. 



- servants of Comte de la Fere. 



68 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Madelaine Turquaine, hostess of the Hotel de la Chevrette, 

D'Artagnan's lodgings. 
Friquet, a choir-boy at Notre Dame. 
Grimaud, " 

C HARLOT, 

Olivain, 

Blasois, 

Boisjoli, servant of Due de Beaufort. 

Noirmont, the Due de Beaufort's steward. 

Host of the Cygne de la Croix. 

Gros Louis, a farmer at St. Germain. 

Landlord of the Crowned Sheep. 

Urbain, a soldier attending on Comte de Guiche. 

ENGLISH. 

Charles I., King of England. 

Henrietta of France, his wife. 

The Princess Henrietta, ^ 

The Princess Charlotte, >■ his children. 

The Duke of Gloucester, J 

Oliver Cromwell. 

Colonel Harrison, ^ 

Captain Groslow, J- officers in Cromwell's army. 

Colonel Tomlinson, J 

President Bradshaw, of the High Court, trying Charles I. 

Lady Fairfax. 

Bishop Juxon. 

John Francis de Winter, in the service of Cromwell, under 

the name of Mordaunt. 
Lord de Winter, his uncle. 
Parry, servant of Charles I. 
Earl of Leven. 
Patrick, a sailor. 



THE 



VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The "Vicomte de Bragelonne," the longest and in 
many respects the most powerful of the D'Artagnan 
series, was first presented to the English-speaking 
public in an unabridged translation, conforming to 
the author's own arrangement and in readable form, 
by the present publishers. Owing to its great 
length it had previously been translated only in 
an abridged form. Detached portions of it, too, 
have appeared from time to time. The chapters 
devoted to Mademoiselle de la Valliere have been 
published separately under the title of " Louise de 
la Valliere," while what is commonly known as 
"The Iron Mask" is a translation of that portion 
of Bragelonne which relates the attempted substi- 
tution of the Bastille prisoner for Louis XIV. 

The romance, as it was written and as it is here 
presented in English, offers a marvellously faithful 
picture of the French court from a period imme- 
diately preceding the young king's marriage to his 
cousin, Maria Theresa, the Infante of Spain, to the 



70 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

downfall of Fouquet. This period was a moment- 
ous one for France, embracing as it did the diplo- 
matic triumph of Mazarin in the advantageous 
Treaty of the Pyrenees ; the death of that avaricious 
and unscrupulous, but eminently able and far-seeing, 
minister and cardinal ; the assumption of power by 
Louis in person; and the rise to high office and 
influence over the crushed and disgraced Fouquet, 
of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. These two years marked 
the beginning of the most brilliant epoch of court 
life in France, as well as of her greatest, if some- 
what factitious, glory both at home and abroad. 

The historical accuracy of the author of " Brage- 
lonne " — which Miss Pardoe, in her justly popular 
and entertaining work on Louis XIV., and the 
historian Michelet as well, have so strongly main- 
tained — is perhaps more striking in this than in 
any other of his romances. It is not only in the 
matter of the events of greater or less importance 
that one familiar with the history of the period seems 
to be reading some contemporary chronicle, but the 
character-sketches of the prominent personages are 
drawn with such entire fidelity to life that we seem 
to see the very men and women themselves as they 
appeared to their contemporaries. 

Thus it is with the king, whose intense egotism 
was beginning to develop, being unceasingly fos- 
tered by the flattery of those who surrounded him 
and told him that he was the greatest of men and 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 71 

kings, invincible in arms and unequalled in wis- 
dom ; who was rapidly reaching that state of sub- 
lime self-sufficiency which led to the famous saying : 
" L'fitat, c'est moi ; " but who was, nevertheless, 
more bashful and timid and humble at the feet of 
the gentle and retiring La Yalliere than if she had 
been the greatest queen in Christendom. 

Of his favorites La Yalliere was the only one 
who loved him for himself alone, and she has come 
down to us as one of the few Frenchwomen who 
have ever been ashamed of being known as a king's 
mistress. Her life is faithfully sketched in these 
pages, from her first glimpse of the king at Blois, 
when she gave her heart to him unasked. When 
the scheme was formed to use her as a cloak for 
the king's flirtation with Madame Henriette, " there 
was a rumor connecting her name with that of a 
certain Yicomte de Bragelonne, who had caused her 
young heart to utter its first sighs in Blois ; but the 
most malicious gossips spoke of it only as a childish 
flame, — that is to say, utterly without importance." 

Mademoiselle de Montalais made herself notori- 
ous as a go-between in various love affairs, while 
Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Oharente, otherwise Made- 
moiselle de Eochechouart-Mortemart, clever and 
beautiful, was destined, as Madame de Montespan, 
to supplant her modest friend in the affections of 
their lord and master ; and after a career of unex- 
ampled brilliancy to be herself supplanted by the 



72 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

governess of her legitimated children, the widow 
Scarron, better known as Madame la Marquise de 
Maintenon. 

" Une maitresse tonnante et triomphante," Madame 
de Sevigne' calls Madame de Montespan. The Mor- 
temart family was supposed to be of the greatest 
antiquity and to have the same origin as the English 
Mortimers. The esprit de Mortemart, or Mortemart 
wit, was reputed to be an inalienable characteristic 
of the race. And what of Madame herself, who 
played a part at the court of France which was 
almost exactly duplicated forty years later by her 
granddaughter, the Savoy princess, who became 
Duchesse de Bourgogne, and whose untimely death 
was one of the most severe of the many domestic 
afflictions which darkened the last years of the old 
king's life ? Let us listen for a moment to Eobert 
Louis Stevenson, writing of the " Yicomte de Brage- 
lonne " after his fifth or sixth perusal of it : — 

" Madame enchants me. I can forgive that royal 
minx her most serious offences ; I can thrill and 
soften with the king on that memorable occasion 
when he goes to upbraid and remains to flirt ; and 
when it conies to the ' Allons, aimez-moi done,' it is 
my heart that melts in the bosom of De Guiche." 

The mutual passion of De Guiche and Madame 
lasted all her life, we are told; and yet, alas! it was 
but short-lived, for Madame's days were numbered. 
She died in 1670, after an illness of but a few hours, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 73 

regretted by everybody except her husband. There 
is little doubt that she was poisoned through the 
instrumentality of the Chevalier de Lorraine, and 
probably with the connivance of Monsieur, whose 
favorite he was. The Chevalier was a prodigy of 
vice, and one of the most unsavory characters of 
the period. 

The greed and avarice of Mazarin were his most 
prominent characteristics ; they are illustrated by 
innumerable anecdotes, one of which may perhaps 
be repeated here: He had been informed that a 
pamphlet was about to be put on sale, in which he 
was shamefully libelled; he confiscated it, and of 
course the market price of it at once increased 
enormously ; whereupon he sold it secretly at an 
exorbitant figure and allowed it to circulate, pocket- 
ing a thousand pistoles as his share of the transac- 
tion. He used to tell of this himself, and laugh 
heartily over it. His supreme power had endured 
so long that everybody desired his death, and his 
contemporaries hardly did justice to the very solid 
benefits he had procured for France. 

In drawing the characters of Fouquet and Colbert, 
Dumas has perhaps, as Mr. Stevenson says, shown 
an inclination to enlist his reader's sympathies for 
the former against his own judgment of the equities 
of the case. 

" Historic justice," says the essayist, " should be 
all upon the side of Colbert, of official honesty and 



74 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

fiscal competence. And Dumas knows it well ; three 
times at least he shows his knowledge, — once it 
is but flashed upon us and received with the laughter 
of Fouquet himself, in the jesting controversy in 
the gardens of Saint-Mande' ; once it is touched on 
by Aramis in the forest of Se'nart ; in the end it is 
set before us clearly in one dignified speech of the 
triumphant Colbert. But in Fouquet — the master, 
the lover of good cheer and wit and art, the swift 
transactor of much business, Vhpmme de bruit, 
I'homme de plaisir, Vhomme qui n'est que parceque 
les metres sont — Dumas saw something of himself, 
and drew the figure the more tenderly ; it is to me 
even touching to see how he insists on Fouquet's 
honor." 

The grand fete at Vaux was the last straw 
which made the superintendent's downfall abso- 
lutely certain. " If his disgrace had not already 
been determined upon in the king's mind, it would 
have been at Yaux. ... As there was but one sun 
in heaven, there could be but one king in France." 

It is interesting to read that the execution of 
the order for Fouquet's arrest was entrusted to one 
D 'Artagnan, Captain of Musketeers, "a man of 
action, entirely unconnected with all the cabals, 
and who, during his thirty-three years' experience 
in the Musketeers, had never known anything 
outside of his orders." 

Fouquet lived nearly twenty years in prison, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 75 

and died in 1680. He has been connected in vari- 
ous ways with the "Man with the Iron Mask," 
some investigators "having maintained that he was 
identical with that individual, and therefore could 
not have died in 1680 ; while others have claimed 
that the Iron Mask was imprisoned at the Chateau 
of Pignerol while Fouquet was there. The legend 
of the unfortunate prisoner has given rise to much 
investigation and to many conjectures. Voltaire 
bent his energies to solve the mystery, and in our 
own day M. Marius Topin has gone into the subject 
most exhaustively, but without reaching a satisfac- 
tory conclusion as to the identity of the sufferer. 
The somewhat audacious use made of the legend 
by Dumas is based upon what was at one time a 
favorite solution ; namely, that the unknown was a 
brother of Louis XIV., said by some to have been 
a twin, and by others to have been some years older 
and of doubtful paternity. 

It would be an endless task to cite all the por- 
tions of these volumes in which historical facts are 
related with substantial accuracy ; in them fact and 
fiction are so blended that each enhances the charm 
of the other, — the element of authenticity adding 
zest and interest to the romantic portions, while the 
element of romance gives life and color to the 
narration of facts. 

Our old friends of the earlier tales bear us com- 
pany nearly to the end; but for the first time, 



76 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

political interests are allowed to interfere with the 
perfect confidence that has existed between them: 
Aramis, as General of the Jesuits, is true to the 
reputation of the order, and hesitates at no dis- 
simulation to gain his ambitious ends. Porthos, 
still blindly faithful to that one of his friends who 
claims his allegiance, falls at last a victim to his 
childlike trust in the scheming prelate, and dies 
the death of a veritable Titan. The magnificent 
outburst of righteous anger which the Comte de la 
Fere visits upon the king is the last expiring gleam 
of the spirit of the Athos of the Musketeers. 
Wrapped up in his love for the heart-broken Brage- 
lonne, he lives only in his life and "dies in his 
death." 

And D'Artagnan ? His praises and his requiem 
have been most fittingly and lovingly sounded by 
the same graceful writer who has already been 
quoted, and in the same essay, entitled "Gossip 
upon a Novel of Dumas," — 

" It is in the character of D'Artagnan that we must 
look for that spirit of morality which is one of the 
chief merits of the book, makes one of the main joys 
of its perusal, and sets it high above more popular 
rivals. ... He has mellowed into a man so witty, 
rough, kind, and upright that he takes the heart by 
storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his 
virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine natural 
civility ; he will sail near the wind ; he is no district 



INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 77 

visitor, no Wesley or Robespierre ; his conscience is 
void of all refinement, whether for good or evil ; but 
the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. . . . 
Here and throughout, if I am to choose virtues for 
myself or my friends, let me choose the virtues of 
D'Artagnan. I do not say that there is no character 
as well drawn in Shakespeare ; I do say there is none 
that I love so wholly. . . . No part of the world has 
ever seemed to me so charming as these pages ; and 
not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps quite so 
dear, as D'Artagnan." 

Of the great closing chapters of the book, in 
which the friends are at last separated by death, 
D'Artagnan falling on the battle-field just as he 
was about to grasp the coveted prize of the baton 
of a marshal of France, Stevenson says : — 

"I can recall no other work of the imagination in 
which the end of life is represented with so nice a tact ; 
. . . and above all, in the last volume, I find a singular 
charm of spirit. It breathes a pleasant and a tonic 
sadness, always brave, never hysterical. Upon the 
crowded, noisy life of this long tale, evening gradually 
falls, and the lights are extinguished, and the heroes 
pass away one by one. One by one the}' go, and not a 
regret embitters their departure. The }'oung succeed 
them in their places. Louis Quatorze is swelling larger 
and shining broader; another generation and another 
France dawn on the horizon, — but for us and these old 
men whom we have loved so long, the inevitable end 
draws near and is welcome. To read this well is to 



78 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

anticipate experience. Ah ! if only when these hours 
of the long shadows fall for us in reality and not in 
figure, we ma}- hope to face them with a mind as quiet. 
But my paper is running out ; the siege-guns are firing 
on the Dutch frontier, and I must say adieu for the 
fifth time to my old comrade, fallen on the field of 
glory. Adieu, rather au revoir ! Yet a sixth time, 
dearest D'Artagnan, we shall kidnap Monk and take 
horse together for Belle Isle." 



THE 



VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE, 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1660-1671. 

Louis XIV., King of Prance. 
Maria Theresa, his Queen. 
Anne of Austria., the Queen Mother. 
Gaston of Orleans, uncle of the King. 

DUCHESSE D'OrLEANS, 

Philippe, Due d'Anjou, brother of the King, afterwards Due 

d' Orleans. 
Henrietta of England, his wife. 
Cardinal Mazarin. 
Bernouin, his valet. 
Brienne, his secretary. 
M. le Due de Beaufort. 
Prince de Conde. 

Chevalier de Lorraine, favorite of Philippe d'Orleans. 
Comte de Saint- Aignan, attending on the King. 
Mademoiselle Marie de Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin. 
Mademoiselle Aure de Montalais, V 
Mlle. Athenaise de Tonnay-Charente, T ^ aids of Honor t0 

afterwards Madame de Montespan, f Henrietta, Duchesse 
Mademoiselle Louise de la Valliere, J Orleans. 

La Molina, Anne of Austria's Spanish nurse. 
Duchesse de Chevretjse. 
Madame de Motteville, ^ 

Madame de Navailles, 

Mademoiselle de Chatillon, V ladies of the Erench Court. 
Comtesse de Soissons, 
Mademoiselle Arnoux, 



80 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Louise de Keroualle, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth. 

Marechal Grammont. 

Comte de Guiche, his son, in love with Madame Henrietta. 

M. de Manicamp, friend of the Comte de Guiche. 

M. de Malicorne, in love with Mademoiselle de Montalais. 

M. d'Artagnan, Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, of the King's 

Musketeers. 
Comte de la Pere (Athos). 

RaOUL, VlCOMTE DE BRAGELONNE, his SOIL 

M. d'Herblay, afterwards Bishop of Vannes, General of the 

Order of Jesuits, and Due d' Alameda (Aramis). 
Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds (Porthos) 
Jean Poquelin de Moliere. 

VlCOMTE DE WARDES. 
M. DE VlLLEROY. 

M. de Pouquet, Superintendent of Pinance. 

Madame Pouquet, his wife. 

Messieurs Lyonne and Letellier, Pouquet's associates m 

the ministry. 
Marquise de Belliere, in love with Pouquet. 

M. DE LA PONTAINE, "\ 
M. GoURVILLE, 

M. Pellisson, V friends of Pouquet. 

M. Conrart, 

M. LORET, 

L'Abbe Pouquet, brother of the Superintendent. 

M. Vanel, a Councillor of Parliament, afterwards Procureur- 
General. 

Marguerite Vanel, his wife, a rival of la Marquise de la Belliere. 

M. de Saint-Remy, maitre-hotel to Gaston of Orleans. 

Madame de Saint-Remy. 

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Intendant of Pinance, afterwards Prime 
Minister. 

Messieurs d'Infreville, Destouches, and Porant, in Col- 
bert's service. 



Jesuits. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 81 

Messieurs Breteuil, Marin, and Havard, colleagues of 

Colbert. 
Messieurs d'Eymeris, Lyodot, and Vanin, Farmers-General 
M. de Baisemaux de Montlezun, Governor of the Bastille. 
Seldon, a prisoner at the Bastille. 
IS T o. 3, Bertaudiere, afterwards " The Iron Mask." 
M. de Saint-Mars, Governor of lie Sainte Marguerite. 
A Franciscan Friar, General of the Order of Jesuits. 
Baron von Wostpur, 
Monseigneur Herrebia, 
Meinheer Bonstett, 

SlGNOR MARINI, 

Lord MacCumnor, 

Grisart, a physician. 

Louis Constant de Pressigny, Captain 

of the King's Frigate " Pomona." 
M. de Gesvres, Captain of the King's Guards. 
M. de Biscarrat, an officer of the King's Guards. 
M. de Friedrich, an officer of the Swiss Guards. 
Messire Jean Percerin, the King's tailor. 
M. Valot, the King's physician. 
Planchet, a confectioner in the Rue des Lombards. 
Madame Gechter, his housekeeper. 
Daddy Celestin, Planchet's servant. 
Bazin, servant to M. d'Herblay. 
Grimaud, an old servant of Athos. 
Mousqueton, servant of Porthos. 
Blasois, servant to Athos. 
Olivain, servant of Yicomte de Bragelonne. 
Jupenet, a printer, ~\ 

Getard, an architect, J- in the service of Fouquet. 
Danicamp, J 

Menneville, an adventurer. 
M. Lebrun, painter. 
M. Faucheux, a goldsmith. 



82 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Vatel, Fouquet's steward. 

Toby, one of Fouquet's servants. 

Yves, a sailor. 

Keyser, a Dutch fisherman. 

Maitre Cropole, of the hostelry of the Medici at Blois. 

Pittrino, his assistant. 

Madame Cropole. 

Landlord of the Beau Paon Hotel. 

Superior of the Carmelite Convent at Chaillot. 

Guenaud, Mazarin's physician. 

The Theatin Father, The Cardinal's spiritual director. 

ENGLISH. 

Charles II., King of England. 

Parry, his servant. 

General Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle. 

Digby, his aide-de-camp. 

General Lambert. 

James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II. 

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. 

Lord Rochester. 

Duke of Norfolk. 

Miss Mary Grafton. 

Miss Stewart. 

Host of the Stag's Horn Tavern. 



THE BLACK TULIP. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The 20th of August, 1672, was by no means the first 
occasion on which the Dutch had demonstrated their 
claim to the very highest rank among ungrateful 
peoples. 

Witness the pathetic figure of the " Great 
Deliverer," the first William of Orange, fighting 
almost single-handed the whole mighty power of 
Philip IL, and standing alone amid the jealous 
envy of those whose release from a hateful, gall- 
ing despotism was his only purpose in life. He 
founded the Dutch Republic in spite of his fellow- 
countrymen, rather than in concert with them ; and 
it was not until the hand of the paid assassin 
struck him down that they knew how truly he 
had been the " Father William " of them and their 
country. 

Who that has read in Motley's engrossing 
pages the story of John of Olden-Barneveldt has 
not been lost in wonder (and in disgust) at the 
blind, unreasoning spirit of jealousy and distrust, 



84 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

which persistently thwarted the earnest, devoted, 
single-hearted efforts of that great-souled man, which 
accused him, of all men on earth, of treachery and 
subserviency to the enemies of the Eepublic, and 
which finally inflicted upon him the most shameful 
of all deaths, — death upon the gallows ? 

The fate of Olden-Barneveldt emphasizes, more 
strongly than any other single circumstance, that 
characteristic of the Dutch, which has always made 
it impossible for them to reap the full benefit of the 
lessons which they have taught to other nations by 
their persistent, self-sacrificing heroism. 

The later exemplification of the same character- 
istic in the scene described in the opening chapters 
of "The Black Tulip" was only the less striking 
in so far as the services of the De Witts to the 
Eepublic had been less eminent and noteworthy 
than those of Barneveldt, whose lot it was to live 
at a more momentous epoch. 

As in the earlier period the great Pensionary fell 
a victim to the machinations of Prince Maurice of 
Orange, or of those who used his revered name 
as a cloak for their designs, while they scattered 
broadcast the charge that Barneveldt was engaged 
in secret and traitorous negotiations with Spain, 
that is to say, with the power, against which his 
whole life was one long tireless struggle: so were 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 85 

the De Witts sacrificed to the youthful ambition 
of another Prince of Orange, who allowed himself 
to be made the tool of the envious detractors of 
the patriotic brothers, so far as to give at least 
his silent assent to the pitiless persecution which 
ended so fatally. The subsequent career of this 
prince upon the English throne did much to efface 
this blot upon his fame. 

The passionate fondness of this same people for 
the peaceful art of floriculture and the historical 
Harlem tulip craze furnished M. Dumas with a 
congenial theme, which, interwoven with the inci- 
dent of the deposit with the innocent tulip-fancier 
of the Grand Pensionary's correspondence with the 
awe-inspiring Court of Prance, was worked over 
by the matchless story-teller into the romance of 
"The Black Tulip." 



THE BLACK TULIP. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1672-1675. 

William, Prince of Orange, afterward William III. King of 

England. 
Louis XIV., King of France. 

Cornelius de Witt, inspector of dikes at the Hague. 
John de Witt, his brother, Grand Pensionary of Holland. 
Colonel van Deken, aide-de-camp to William of Orange. 
Dr. Cornelius van Baerle, a tulip-fancier, godson of Cornelius 

de Witt. 
Mynheer Isaac Boxtel, his rival. 
Marquis de Louvois. 

Count Tilly, Captain of the Cavalry of the Hague. 
Mynheer Bowelt, ) d ^ 
Mynheer d'Asperen, ) 
The Recorder of the States. 
Master van Spenser, a magistrate at Dort. 
Tyckalaer, a surgeon at the Hague. 
Gerard Dow. 
Mynheer van Systens, Burgomaster of Harlem and President 

of its Horticultural Society. 
Craeke, confidential servant of John de Witt. 
Gryphus, a jailer. 
Rosa, his daughter, in love with Cornelius van Baerle. 



LE 



CHEVALIER D'HARMENTAL. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The eight years from the death of Louis XIV., in 
1715, to the legal majority of his great-grandson 
and successor, Louis XV., in 1723, exhibited a state 
of affairs in France corresponding very closely with 
that which existed in England after the Restoration 
of 1660, — when the natural reaction from the 
supremacy of the pleasure-hating, psalm-singing 
saints of the Commonwealth carried the nation 
to hitherto unheard-of excesses in the opposite 
direction. 

During the last thirty years of the reign of the 
"Grand Monarque," piety had come to be the 
fashion at the French Court, of which Madame de 
Maintenon, the king's unacknowledged wife, was 
the true, though uncrowned, queen. 

" Louis XIV., in his old age, became religious," 
says Macaulay in one of his critical essays ; " he 
determined that his subjects should be religious, 
too ; he shrugged his shoulders and knitted his 
brows if he observed at his levee or near his 



90 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

dinner-table any gentleman who neglected the 
duties enjoined by the Church, and rewarded 
piety with blue ribbons, invitations to Marly, 
governments, pensions, and regiments. Forthwith 
Versailles became, in everything but dress, a con- 
vent. The pulpits and confessionals were sur- 
rounded by swords and embroidery. The Marshals 
of France were much in prayer; and there was 
hardly one among the dukes and peers who did 
not carry good little books in his pocket, fast dur- 
ing Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de 
Maintenon, who had a great share in the blessed 
work, boasted that devotion had become quite the 
fashion." 

But Louis XIV. died. His will was treated 
with scant ceremony by the Parliament of Paris ; 
his legitimized sons were pulled down from the 
height to which he, with the cordial approval of 
their former governess, Madame de Maintenon, had 
elevated them ; and Philippe, Due d'Orle'ans, whose 
private morals were the very antithesis of all that 
had been held in high esteem at court for a gene- 
ration, was placed at the head of the government 
during the minority of the young king. 

The many excellent qualities of the regent were 
overshadowed, in his own day as they have been 
for posterity, by the shameless profligacy of his life. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 91 

When the royal power, substantially unlimited, was 
placed in his hands, the whole face of the court 
changed; and unblushing debauchery succeeded to 
the odor of sanctity which had so long filled the 
nostrils of the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon 
was discredited; Pere le Tellier, the bigoted con- 
fessor of the late king, vanished from the public 
gaze ; while those whose real or pretended piety 
had led them to espouse the cause of the Due du 
Maine as against the regent, had nothing to hope 
for under the new administration. Add to this that 
the father, mother, and brother of the child who 
had become king had all died within a week of 
one another some three years before ; that his own 
life had been saved at the same time only by a 
miracle, and that very many people, under the 
guidance of a few who pretended to believe it, 
honestly did believe that the Due d'Orle'ans was 
responsible for all these casualties ; while the 
throne of Spain was filled by a grandson of Louis 
XIV., himself a candidate for the regency, bitterly 
jealous of the regent, and an inevitable candidate 
for the throne in case of the death of the sickly 
child, whose life was supposed to be in hourly 
danger. To be sure, by the terms of the Treaty of 
Utrecht, Philippe V. solemnly renounced all claim 
to the throne of France ; but the emptiness of such 



92 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

renunciations had been abundantly demonstrated 
in the case of his great-grandmother, Anne of 
Austria, wife of Louis XIII., and his grandmother, 
Marie Thdrese, wife of Louis XIV.; and even Saint- 
Simon, the most devoted of all the friends of the 
regent, tells us in his Memoirs that if Louis XV. 
had died he should have been obliged, tearfully 
and with great regret, to espouse the cause of the 
representative of the elder line. Under these cir- 
cumstances, some sort of a plot against the govern- 
ment of the regent was inevitable. The so-called 
"Conspiracy of Cellamare,'' formed to carry out a 
far-reaching scheme of the ambitious and restless 
intriguer, Cardinal Alberoni, the all-powerful minister 
of Philippe V., forms the ground-work upon which 
Dumas has built the " Chevalier d'Harmental." 

That the epithet " far-reaching" is not misapplied 
to the scheme of the ex-bell-ringer of Parma, will 
be apparent upon perusal of the objects he had in 
view, which are set forth with fulness and accuracy 
in the following pages ; but the denouement con- 
tained many elements of burlesque. Indeed, despite 
the undoubted earnestness of the Duchesse du 
Maine and the poisoned pen of the atrabilious poet, 
La Grange Chancel, the "Court" of Sceaux, with 
its " Order of the Honey-Bee," was a burlesque in 
itself, and the conspirators at the French end were 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 93 

mere playthings in the hands of the clever and 
unscrupulous Dubois. It is a curious fact that the 
Duchess, who was a legitimate princess of the blood 
(she and her sister were called " dolls of the blood " 
in allusion to their diminutive size), was the life 
and soul of a plot to elevate the late king's illegiti- 
mate progeny over the heads of the legitimate 
princes, while her husband, the principal beneficiary 
of the plot, was very lukewarm in forwarding it. 
and had to be continually urged on by her. It is 
said that while Louis XIV. was at the point of 
death, the Due du Maine persisted in neglecting 
his own interests to devote himself to a translation 
of Lucretius, so that his wife said to him contempt- 
uously : " You will wake some fine morning to find 
yourself a member of the Academy, and the Due 
d'Orle'ans Eegent of France." 

For the character of the Due du Maine it is 
hard to feel any emotion but contempt ; while it is 
equally hard to avoid feeling something like sym- 
pathy for the perpetual disappointments of his 
restless, intriguing little wife. Her character is 
best studied in the extremely entertaining memoirs 
of Mademoiselle de Launay, better known as Ma- 
dame de Staal, but who must not be confounded 
with the more celebrated Madame de Stael (born 
Mademoiselle Necker) of the Revolutionary era. 



94 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. * 

There is, indeed, no other source from which so 
much information as to the inside workings of 
the "Conspiracy of Cellamare" can be obtained. 
" Little " de Launay was an extremely clever young 
woman, and when the bubble burst, she abundantly 
justified the confidence the conspirators had placed 
in her discretion. It is evident from her own naive 
disclosures that the old Abbe' Chaulieu was not the 
only one of the " Knights of the Honey-Bee " who 
offered love to her; but he was so old that his 
ardent passion was a fair theme of gossip and 
pleasantry. "The abbd often proposed to make 
me handsome presents," she says, "in addition to 
the incense he poured out at my feet. Being some- 
what annoyed one day by his persistence in urging 
me to accept a thousand pistoles, I said to him : 
* As a mark of my gratitude for your generous offers 
I give you this advice : don't make similar ones to 
many women or you may find one who will take 
you at your word.' ' Oh ! ' said he, ' I know whom 
I am dealing with.' This naive response made me 
laugh." 

The finishing touch was put, to the exasperation 
of Madame du Maine, by the outcome of the famous 
Bed of Justice of August, 1718, which is referred to 
by Dumas. Her appeals to Alberoni for a speedy 
beginning of operations became frantic; and the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 95 

negotiations through Cellamare were rapidly draw- 
ing to a point, when Dubois thought fit to show his 
hand, and the farce was at an end. That the 
brewing of the conspiracy had long been known to 
Dubois admits of little doubt ; the circumstances 
which immediately led to the pricking of the 
bubble have been variously related. 

Voltaire (Precis du Siecle de Louis XV.) gives 
the credit of putting Dubois upon the scent to La 
Fillon, "a courtesan who had risen from the lowest 
slums to become a celebrated procuress. She had 
long been in the pay of Dubois, who had recently 
become Secretary for Foreign Affairs." As told by 
Voltaire, the responsibility for the premature dis- 
closure rests with the Abbe' de Porto-Carrero, an 
attach^ of the Spanish Embassy and an habitue' 
of the establishment of La Fillon, where certain 
papers were filched from him as he was on the 
point of setting out for Spain. The papers were 
handed over to Dubois, by whose orders Porto- 
Carrero was pursued and overtaken at Poitiers. 
All his papers were seized, with the result de- 
scribed by Dumas. The Fillon incident is rejected 
by M. Henri Martin, but is accepted by Michelet ; 
it is mentioned in all the contemporary memoirs, 
too ; and as Voltaire was in Paris at the time, there 
seems to be good reason to believe that it rests 



96 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

upon a foundation of fact. There is also excellent 
authority for the Buvat incident, substantially as 
here related. Jean Buvat was a clerk at the Biblio- 
theque, who eked out his very slender pay by 
copying. He was .the author of certain memoirs 
which exist only in manuscript, but are deemed of 
much value by historical writers, especially as to 
the exciting scenes incident to the rise and progress 
of the "Mississippi" scheme and the financial "sys- 
tem " of John Law. 

The customary accuracy of the gifted author, 
both in the delineation of character and the rela- 
tion of incident, is to be noted in the " Chevalier 
d'Harmental." With the exception of the hero 
himself and Bathilde, and the scenes which deal 
with their mutual attachment, hardly a person is 
mentioned who was not a prominent figure of the 
time ; hardly an event, however trivial, is referred 
to which did not actually happen. 

In Madame de Staal-de Launay's entertaining 
pages, we meet Malezieux, Brigaud, Pompadour, 
Baron de Yalef (Walef), the Comte de Laval, and 
"le beau Cardinal de Polignac," who continued to 
conspire for many years afterward whenever he 
saw a chance. 

During the first three quarters of the eighteenth 
century, there was no time when Richelieu, the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 97 

fribble, failed to occupy a prominence which was 
as absurd as it was humiliating to the court which 
permitted it. While he was confined in the Bastille 
(for the third time) for his idiotic share in the 
Cellamare affair, he was visited by two royal prin- 
cesses, disguised as laundresses, — Mademoiselle de 
Charolais, a descendant of the great Conde', and 
Mademoiselle de Valois, the regent's daughter. The 
latter was finally married to the Duke of Modena 
to remove her from the sphere of Eichelieu's in- 
fluence. It is said that she voluntarily exposed 
herself to infection from the small-pox to escape 
the distasteful match; but she was at last com- 
pelled to leave France. She gave vent to her sen- 
timents in the following punning verses : — 

" J'epouse un des plus petits princes, 
Maitre des tres-petits etats, 
Quatre desquels ne vaudraient pas 
Une de nos moindres provinces. 
Nul jeu : finance tres-petite : 
Quelle difference, grand Dieu 1 
Entre ce triste et pauvre lieu, 
Et le riche lieu que je quitte ! " 

It should perhaps be noticed that the author has 
somewhat ante-dated the elevation of Dubois to the 
archbishopric of Cambrai, which did not actually 
take place until 1720. The necessary preliminaries 
to his elevation, arising from the facts that he was 



98 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

not in holy orders and was a married man, were 
accomplished as described. The Comte de Noce\ 
who stood closest to the regent of all the roues, 
said to him, apropos of this appointment : " What ! 
That man Archbishop of Cambrai ! Why, you told 
me yourself that he was a miserable, worthless, 
unbelieving dog." 

"So he is," said the regent, "and that's just 
the reason why I have made the appointment; 
when he's an archbishop he will have to go to 
communion." 

While there is much in the character of the Due 
d'Orldans which merits the severest condemnation 
and little to command actual respect, his vices were 
after all those of a deplorably weak rather than a 
wicked man. It can fairly be said that he never 
purposely injured a human being ; and history fur- 
nishes ample justification for relieving the gloomy 
picture of his slavish subserviency to his own 
passions and to -the will of his crafty minister and 
ex-preceptor, by ascribing to him such generous 
deeds as that with which this story closes. 



LE 



CHEVALIER D'HARMENTAL. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1718. 

Louis XV. s at the age of nine. 

Philippe, Due d'Orleans, his uncle, the Regent of France. 

Duchesse d'Orleans, his wife. 

Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, the 

Regent's mother. 
Duchesse de Berri, 
Louise-Adelaide d'Orleans, 

Mademoiselle de Chartres, 

r > the Regent s 

Mademoiselle Aglae de v alois, V j o-hter 

Princess Louise, afterward Queen of Spain, 

Mademoiselle Elizabeth, afterward Duch- 
esse de Lorraine, 

Abbe Dubois, the Regent's Minister of State. 

Andre Hercule de Fleury, Archbishop of Frejus, preceptor 
to the young King. 

Madame de Maintenon. 

Duke of Berwick, Lieutenant- General of the French armies. 

Adrien Maurice, Due de Noailles, President of the Council 
of Finance. 

Marechal d'Uxelles, President of the Council of Foreign 
Affairs. 

Due d'Antin, Superintendent of Ships. 

Bishop of Troyes. 

Bishop of Nantes. 

M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastille. 



100 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



gentlemen of the French 
Court. 



Prince de Conde, 

Louis Henri, Due de Bourbon, 

Due de Saint-Simon, 

Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, 

Comte de Toulouse, 
Due de Laforce, 
Chevalier de Ravanne, 
Marquis de Lavrilliere, 
Marquis" d'Effiat, 
Marquis de Torcy, 
Marechal de Villars, 
Marechal d'Estrees, 
Marechal de Bezons, 
Marquis de Canillac, 
Chevalier de Simiane, 
Comte de Eargy, 
Due de Guiche, 
Comte de Noce, 
Due de Brancas, 
Marquis de Broglie, 
Marquis de Parabere, 
Comte de Gage, 
M. Leblanc, 
Messire Voyer d'Argenson, Lieutenant of Police. 
Marquis de Lafare, Captain of the Guards. 
Monsieur d'Artagnan, Captain of the Gray Musketeers. 
Marquis de Sabran, maitre-d'-hotel to the Regent. 
Marquise de Parabere, 

DUCHESSE DE EaLARIS, 

Madame Sophie d'Averne, 

Marquise de Sabran, 

Mademoiselle Saleri, 

Madame de Tencin, 

Mademoiselle de Charolais. 

Madame de Mouchy, lady of honor to Ducliesse de Berri. 

Madame de Pons, tire-woman to Ducliesse de Berri. 



ladies of the French Court. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



101 



Philip V. of Spain, 

Cardinal Alberoni, 

Monsieur le Due du Maine, son of Louis 

XIV. and Madame de Montespan, 
Louise Benedicte de Conde, Duchesse du 

Maine, 
Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, 
Louis Francois Armand du Plessis, Due 

de Richelieu, 
Marquis de Pompadour, 
Monsieur de Malezieu, Chancellor of 

Dombes and Lord of Chatenay, 
Prince de Cellamere, the Spanish Am- 
bassador, 
Marechal de Villeroy, 
Mademoiselle Sophie de Launay, 
Comte de Laval, 
Joseph de Lagrange-Chancel, a satirical 

poet, 
M. de Saint-Genest, a poet, 
Abbe de Chaulieu, 
M. de Saint- Aulaire, 
M. Antoine de Chastellux, 
Madame la Marechale de Villeroy, 
Madame de Chanost, 
Madame de Brissac, 
Madame de Rohan, 
Madame de Croissy, 
D'Avranches, valet-de-chambre to Madame 

du Maine, 
Abbe Brigaud, 
M. de Bessac, an ensign in the Guards of 

Due du Maine, 
Chevalier Baoul d'Harmental, in love 

with Bathilde, 
Baron Rene de Valef, his friend, 



conspirators 
• against the Re- 
gent. 



102 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Cauchereau, a tenor of the Academie Royal, favorite of 

Mademoiselle de Chartres. 
Monsieur de Riom, favorite of La Duchesse de Berri. 
Mademoiselle Bury, of the Opera. 

Albert du Rocher, an officer in the service of Due d'Orleans. 
Clarice du Rocher, his wife. 

Bathilde, their daughter, in love with the Chevalier d'Harmental. 
Jean Buvat, an employee in the government library. 
Monsieur Ducondray, his colleague. 
Nanette, Bathilde's servant. 
MaItre Durand, a restaurant-keeper. 
Raffe, valet-de-chambre to M. le Due de Richelieu. 
Bourguinon, | b the seryice of the Abb6 Duboig> 

COMTOIS, J 

Madame Denis, a lodging-house keeper. 

Mademoiselle £milie, j her daughters> 

Mademoiselle Athenaise, ) 

Boniface Denis, her son. 

Monsieur Fremond, a lodger at the house of Madame Denis. 

La Fillon. 

La Normandie. 

Captain Roquefinette, an adventurer. 



THE REGENT'S DAUGHTER. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

When the Conspiracy of Cellamare, which forms 
the main theme of the "Chevalier d'Harmental," 
was exposed, or when the Abbe' Dubois thought 
fit to put an end to it, the Duchesse du Maine 
was condemned by the regent to undergo imprison- 
ment in the Chateau of Dijon. In due course of 
time her longing to renew the glories of her own 
little court at Sceaux made her enforced sojourn 
in the provinces extremely irksome to her, and she 
purchased her liberty by making a full disclosure 
of the names of all who had been cognizant of, or 
privy to, the negotiations with Alberoni, as repre- 
senting the Court of Spain. It thus became known 
to the authorities that the main reliance of the 
conspirators for active support had been the prov- 
ince of Bretagne. These disclosures threw much 
light upon certain symptoms of disaffection which 
had appeared in that province, whose people seemed 
almost to form a race apart from those of other 



104 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

portions of the kingdom. It turned out that the 
resistance of the States of Bretagne to the orders 
of the royal governor was but a cover for continued 
negotiations with Spain, looking toward a perma- 
nent separation of Bretagne from France. The 
States at last declared the province independent 
because its privileges had been invaded ; and the 
standard of rebellion was thus boldly displayed. 
The progress and crisis of the revolt are described 
with sufficient fidelity to truth in these pages. The 
name of Gaston de Chanlay is the only one of 
the five which has no place in an absolutely 
accurate record of the scene in the public square 
of Nantes, at midnight of a certain tempestuous 
night in March, 1720. 

"To this day," says Dumas, in one of his 
strictly historical works, " La Eegence," " in the 
very heart of Bretagne, at Saint-Malo, at Lorient, at 
Villeneuve, at Brest or Finisterre, one finds in the 
poorest huts portraits of Talhouet, Pontcalec, Mont- 
louis, and Du Couedic handed down from father 
to son. And when you ask your hosts, the occu- 
pants of these huts, who these men are whose 
features they preserve so devoutly, in their trustful 
ignorance some will reply : ' They are saints ; ' 
others, 'They are martyrs.'" 

The scenes between the regent and Dubois are 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 105 

particularly interesting, because they mark so 
sharply the contrast between the regent's natural 
disposition to leniency ancl mercy — even, perhaps 
most of all, to those whose blows were aimed at 
his own person or power — and the facility with 
which he yielded to the representations of his 
mentor, whose hold upon his mind and will grew 
stronger day by day until the end. 

The Due d'Orldans has been fortunate in this, 
that the virtues which he did possess — large- 
hearted generosity, unfailing kindness and courtesy 
to his inferiors, and intense affection for his chil- 
dren, whether born in or out of wedlock — have 
seldom failed to arouse emotions distinctly resem- 
bling sympathy for one whose vices, though of 
monumental proportions, were those of the age in 
which he lived, and whose life was embittered 
by cruel, unmerited accusations of having caused 
the untimely deaths of the Due and Duchesse de 
Bourgogne and the Due de Bretagne, — the father, 
mother, and brother of the young king. It is 
always to be remembered to his credit that he 
watched with unfailing care and affection over the 
well-being of the royal child, whose hold upon 
life was always feeble and uncertain, and who 
alone stood between him and what was still one 
of the most exalted thrones of Christendom. 



106 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The regent was not fortunate in his legitimate 
daughters. The career of the Duchesse de Berri 
is revolting and saddening in the extreme, even 
although we are told by one of the contemporary- 
memoir- writers that a post-mortem examination 
revealed the fact that she was "crack-brained." 
The convent life of the Abbess of Chelles was 
little short of scandalous; while the matrimonial 
bickerings of Mademoiselle de Valois and her 
husband, the Duke of Modena, were of European 
notoriety. A fourth daughter became the wife of 
the Prince of Asturias, and was Queen of Spain 
for the few months which intervened between the 
absurd abdication of Philippe V. and the death of 
her husband. Her leading characteristics were an 
extremely morose disposition, and personal habits 
slovenly in the extreme ; and her Spanish subjects 
seized the first convenient pretext to send her back 
to France, and were very remiss in remitting her 
allowance. The youngest of all, Mademoiselle de 
Beaujolais, was the only one who combined good 
morals with an attractive personality, and she died 
of a broken heart almost before she was out of 
her teens. 

The memoirs of Madame de Staal-de Launay 
furnish abundant authority for the entertaining 
description given by Dumas of the life led by 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 107 

the conspirators in the Bastille. The author of 
the memoirs was decidedly heartless in her treat- 
ment of poor Maison-Eouge, the lieutenant of the 
fortress, whose ardent passion for herself she piti- 
lessly used as a means of forwarding her love 
affair with the Chevalier de Mesnil. The following 
passage is illustrative of the skill with which she 
kept two strings to her bow ; and at the same time 
it enlightens us still further as to the diversions 
in which these fortunate prisoners were allowed 
to indulge. 

"One day when he (Maison-Eouge) was taking 
supper with me, Mesnil, who had found a way of 
opening the door of his room, came and listened 
at my door. He claimed that I was very gay and 
lively, and that I had spoken of him with insulting 
levity. But he was even more put out because,, 
when we left the table, we went to the window, 
the weather being extremely warm. There the 
lieutenant suggested that I should sing, and I 
began a scene from the opera of " Iphige'nie." 
The Due de Eichelieu, who was at his window, 
sang the reply of Orestes, which fitted in very 
nicely with our situation. Maison-Eouge, who 
thought that it entertained me, allowed us to 
sing the scene through. It was by no means 
entertaining to the Chevalier de Mesnil. The 



108 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

next day he questioned me in his letter about the 
supper, at which I had no idea that he had been 
a listener. I did not remember that his name 
had been mentioned between us, so I said nothing 
about it to him. This seemed to him to import 
some secret understanding between Maison-Eouge 
and myself, and he was so enraged that he insisted 
upon my breaking with the lieutenant. I at last 
succeeded, however, in making him understand how 
excessively inconvenient that would be for our 
affairs, and he cooled down." 

Messire Voyer d'Argenson, an excellent lieu- 
tenant of police transformed into a very mediocre 
keeper of the seals, subjected Mademoiselle de 
Launay to an inquisitory ordeal very similar to 
that undergone at his hands by Gaston de Chanlay ; 
and the versatile femme de chambre acquitted her- 
self with no less skill and discretion than was 
exhibited by the Breton hero. M. d'Argenson is 
an interesting figure of the period, no less in his 
own right than as the father of two sons, each 
of whom made an honorable name in high office 
under Louis XV. The Marquis owes his greatest 
fame, however, to his very entertaining and valu- 
able memoirs of the first thirty years of the reign. 

When Madame du Maine was at last allowed 
to return to Sceaux, she found assembled there. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 109 

Pompadour, Laval, Malezieux, and Mademoiselle 
de Launay. "Waiting," says Dumas, "to recom- 
mence those delightful entertainments which poor, 
blind Chaulieu, who could not see them, used to 
call " les nuits blanches de Sceaux.'' 

It is, perhaps, mere supererogation to repeat 
what has been said so often of others of M. Dumas' 
romances, — that contemporary authority can be 
cited for every anecdote or incident not directly 
connected with the distinctively romantic portions 
of the narrative. 

The Princess Palatine's pleasantry as to the 
gifts of the fairies to her son at his birth is told 
by Saint-Simon and Duclos, as is the anecdote of 
the same out-spoken lady's very forcible expression 
of her displeasure when her son's contemplated 
marriage was announced to her. Saint-Simon, 
again, and the Marquis d'Argenson agree in affirm- 
ing that Dubois had the temerity to demand a 
nomination to the Sacred College from Louis XIV. 
as a reward for his potent assistance in bringing 
about that marriage. This latter anecdote is dis- 
credited, however, by a very recent writer, 1 who 
has undertaken, with what measure of success it 
does not concern us to inquire, to clear away some 

1 James Breck Perkins, in " France Under the Regency," 
etc. 



110 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

of the odium with which Dubois has been sur- 
rounded from his death to the present day. 

The assumption of queenly pomp by the mad 
Duchesse de Berri, as well as her secret marriage 
with Eiom, are equally well authenticated. The 
wrath of the Princess Palatine at this nisalliance 
was far more violent than that of the culprit's 
father, who certainly was indulgent to a fault. 
The severity with which Kiom was treated was 
due to the outcry of the. grandmother, rather than 
to the outraged dignity of the father. 

There is, alas, no doubt that the regent's daily 
avocations and distractions are faithfully described 
in the course of this narrative. Saint-Simon, his 
chief apologist, deplores the fact which he cannot 
explain away, except by putting the blame upon 
the shoulders of Dubois ; but the generous impulse 
to which D'Orldans is made to yield when he 
pardons De Chanlay, whose avowed object was to 
compass his death, is no less characteristic of the 
unfortunate prince, of whom the same apologist, 
who was also his dearest friend, said long after 
his death that his character was an enigma which 
he had never been able to solve. 



THE REGENT'S DAUGHTER. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Period, 1719. 

Philippe, Due d'Orleans, Regent of France. 

Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, his 

mother. 
Duchesse d'Orleans, his wife. 

DUCHESSE DE BeRRI, 1 

Mademoiselle de Chartres, Abbess of Chelles, LWgMsrs of 

Mademoiselle de Valois, J the Re S ent - 

Louis, the Regent's son. 

Abbe Dubois, Minister of State. 

Helene de Chaverny, a natural daughter of the Regent, in 

love with Gaston de Chanlay. 
Due de St. Simon, "\ 

Marquis de Broglie, 

Chevalier de Slmiane, 

M. de Biron, 

M. de Mouchy, 

Marquis de Lafare, Captain of the Regent's Guards. 

Marquis de la Vrilliere, ) of the ^^ 

M. de Leblanc, ) 

Messire Voyer d'Argenson, Lieutenant of Police 



112 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



prisoners in the Bastille. 



M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastille. 

M. de Maison-Rouge, his Lieutenant. 

Due de Richelieu, 

Marquis de Pompadour, 

Comte de Laval, 

M. de Malezieux, 

Abbe Brigaud, 

Chevalier Dumesnil, 

Mademoiselle Sophie de Launay, . 

Cauchereau, music-master to Mademoiselle de Chartres. 

Chevalier de Riom, married to Duchesse de Berri. 

Comte de Noce, a friend of the Regent. 

Cardinal Alberoni. 

Due d'Olivares, a Spanish agent. 

Gaston de Chanlay, in love with Helena 

Marquis de Pontcalec, 

m. de montlouis, 

M. du Couedic, 

M. de Talhouet, 

Captain la Jonquiere, 

Marquis de Guer, uncle of Marquis de Pontcalec. 

Sire de Pontcalec. 

The Sorceress op Savenay. 

Baron de Caradec 

M. de Montarau, intendent of the Province of Bretagne 

Marechal de Montesquiou, commanding at Bretagne. 

M. de Chateauneuf. 

La Souris, the Regent's favorite. 

Julie, the mistress of Dubois. 

Chevalier de M . 

Madame Ursule, Superior of the Ursulines at Clisson. 
Sister Therese, of the Ursulines. 
Madame Desroches, in the Regent's Service. 
Bourguignon, landlord of the Hotel " Muid d'Amour." 
La Jonciere, a smuggler. 



conspirators 
against the Re- 
gent's life. 



LIST OF CHAKACTEHS. 113 



La Jonquille, sergeant in the French Guards. 

Grippart, ) soldiers _ 

L'Enlevant, ) 

Oven, Gaston de Chanlay's servant. 

-r tI IN ' I i n the service of Dubois. 

L Eveille, S 

Christopher, a jailer at Nantes. 

Lamer, the executioner. 



MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The leading events of the last years of the long 
and disastrous reign of Louis XV. are described in 
these volumes with the author's accustomed accu- 
racy and fulness of detail. During those years 
the unhappy kingdom of France seems to have 
taken its longest strides towards the end which 
keen observers had long seen to be inevitable. 

In " Olympe de Cleves " we have seen the king, 
young, handsome, and nattered, hesitating on the 
threshold of the career of debauchery into which 
his intriguing courtiers, with the assent if not the 
co-operation of the all-powerful minister and for- 
mer preceptor, Fleury, were striving to force him 
for their own selfish ends. In these Memoirs of 
Balsamo, we are shown the deplorable close of that 
career half a century later. During that half- 
century — the " period of the Decadence of the 
Monarchy," it has been called by Monsieur Henri 
Martin — the people of France, groaning beneath 
the weight of extortion and oppression, had seen 



116 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

the prevailing luxury and extravagance of the court 
increase in proportion as their own burdens grew. 
Rapacious mistresses, each with her following of 
greedy sycophants and relatives, had succeeded one 
another with scarcely a breathing space between ; 
costly and disastrous wars had been waged to 
gratify their whims or to avenge real or fancied 
slights put upon them. Small wonder that he who 
had been greeted on his return from the brilliant 
but unproductive victory of Fontenoy with the 
title of Louis le Bien-Aime' (the Well-beloved), had 
come to be the most hated and despised man in the 
realm. 

It is interesting to observe the steady degenera- 
tion (if we may use the word) in social standing 
of the successive favorites of Louis XV. 

The three sisters De Nesle — Madame de Mailly, 
Madame de Vintimille, and the Duchesse de 
Chateauroux — were scions of one of the most 
venerable families in France, and could trace their 
lineage back to the twelfth century. To be sure 
their immediate progenitors were of decidedly 
unsavory character, but such considerations were 
of slight importance to a generation which was the 
direct heir of the traditions of the Eegency. To 
Madame de Chateauroux succeeded Jeanne Antoi- 
nette Poisson, daughter of a commissary's clerk, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 117 

and wife of a rich farmer-general's nephew and 
heir, — that is to say, a typical representative of the 
bourgeoisie, or middle, class. For twenty years 
this minister in petticoats, created Marquise de 
Pompadour, ruled the kingdom of France over the 
shoulders of its weak and dissolute monarch. That 
she was utterly unscrupulous as to the means she 
employed to maintain her ascendency, the infamous 
invention of the Pare aux Cerfs is, in itself, suf- 
ficient proof. 

Frederick the Great sneeringly called her " Cotil- 
lon II. ; " but Maria Theresa wrote her a letter in 
which she called her " my dear cousin." So small 
a matter as this decided the policy of France at a 
critical period : Madame de Pompadour declared 
in favor of alliance with Austria, the " Seven 
Years' War " ensued, and France was despoiled of 
her colonial possessions, and left practically help- 
less at the mercy of her enemies. 

She it was who " made " Choiseul, and established 
his influence and authority upon so firm a founda- 
tion that her death left him the supreme power in 
the kingdom. Past experience had taught the les- 
son that he could be dislodged in no other way than 
by the accession of a new favorite, and any hopes 
which may have arisen in the hearts of those who 
really desired to see an end of the regime of shame 



118 INTKODUCTOKY NOTE. 

and scandal which had endured so long, were des- 
tined to be short-lived. 

The versions of the story are so numerous and 
conflicting that it is impossible — and perhaps 
unimportant — to say with certainty who is enti- 
tled to the doubtful honor of having brought about 
the first meeting between the king and the young 
woman whose career under the name of the Com- 
tesse du Barry is one of the most remarkable in 
history. There is no doubt, however, as to the 
antecedents of the young woman in question, or 
that when Louis XV. raised her to the shameful 
eminence which Madame de Pompadour had last 
occupied, he reached the lowest point in the social 
scale, and selected a true daughter of the people. 

She was born in the little provincial town of Vau- 
couleurs in .1743, and was the illegitimate child of 
one Anne Be^u. Her early history may be read in 
many places ; nowhere perhaps is it told more con- 
cisely or interestingly than by MM. de Goncourt 
(in " La du Barry "). Being thrown entirely on her 
own resources in the streets of Paris, whither her 
mother had been driven by poverty, possessed of 
extraordinary personal attractions, and with very 
lax ideas on the subject of female virtue, her story 
is not an edifying one. She fell at last into the 
hands of Comte Jean du Barry, a native of Toulouse 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 119 

who had lived many years at Paris, and whose 
career of heedless, cynical, and unbridled licentious- 
ness and debauchery — noteworthy, even in those 
days — had won for him the title of the Eoue. She 
had meanwhile taken the name of Eauc,on, — her 
mother having married one of that name, — and 
had subsequently adopted the nom-de-guerre of 
Mademoiselle Lange. 

The attachment between the blase comte and the 
beautiful courtesan soon became one of interest 
solely, and as it came toDu Barry's knowledge that 
the enemies of the Due de Choiseul were seeking to 
fill the void which Madame de Pompadour's death 
had left in the king's affections, he conceived the 
idea of putting forward La Lange as a fit candidate. 

In some way or other the agency of Lebel, the 
king's confidential valet, was made use of, and the 
discarded mistress of the Eoue was placed where 
the eye of royalty would fall upon her. There 
seems to have been little thought, except in the 
mind of Du Barry, that the result would be anything 
more than the passing fancy of a day ; but the im- 
pression made by the clever creature was not only 
immediate, but gave such indubitable signs of hav- 
ing come to stay that Lebel " was alarmed at the 
unworthy attachment which seemed to have taken 
full possession of the king's mind and heart. He 



120 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

informed his master that the woman who had been 
brought to his notice was unmarried, and untitled, 
and he thought it his duty to call the king's atten- 
tion to the compromising results of any further ac- 
quaintance with her. The king stopped him short, 
told him to arrange a marriage for her at once, and, 
when she was married, to bring her to Compiegne." 
(De Goncourt.) 

It is probable that Eichelieu, the ever young, 
whom we have seen in the "Chevalier d'Har- 
mental " and the " Eegent's Daughter," in the far-off 
days of the regency while the king was yet in his 
cradle, already a past master in gallantry, and add- 
ing zest to his amatory pursuits by playing the part 
of Harlequin in the burlesque called the " Con- 
spiracy of Cellamare," and again, in " Olympe de 
Cleves," with diplomatic honors thick upon him, 
devoting his energies to the corruption of his youth- 
ful sovereign, — it is probable, we say, that Eichelieu 
was instrumental in bringing Mademoiselle Lange to 
the king's notice. Throughout the reign of Louis XV. 
this mock-conspirator, mock-soldier, and mock-states- 
man, who never appeared in his true colors except 
as a libertine and dabbler in petty intrigues, was 
always at the ear of the king, pandering to the 
tastes which he had done more than any other to 
form, and fawning upon the favorite of the day, 



INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 121 

her subservient slave, — the king's evil genuis, in 
very truth. 

The picture of the cynical, heartless old rake 
drawn by Dumas is one of the best of the many 
admirable ones presented in these pages. 

To return to the new favorite. Comte Jean du 
Barry had a convenient brother, Guillaume, at Tou- 
louse, who readily consented to a marriage which 
required him to make no sacrifice of his liberty, and 
provided a handsome allowance for his complai- 
sance. A false registry of the bride's baptism was 
manufactured, in which her birth was put back 
three years to 1746, and she was represented to 
have been born in wedlock of Anne Be^u, by her 
husband, one Jean Jacques Gomard de Vaubernier. 
The banns were published, the marriage ceremony 
was performed, the groom returned to Toulouse, and 
the bride went at once to Versailles, where she was 
installed in the apartments lately occupied by the 
king's daughter, Madame Adelaide. 

Nothing need be added to Dumas's masterly 
delineation of Madame du Barry's character and 
conduct. There were very few among the great 
ladies of the court whose horror at the spec- 
tacle of a woman picked up from the street to be 
placed over all their heads did not soon yield to 
the necessity of being well with her. She brought 



122 INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 

to Versailles the manners and the slang of the local- 
ities in which her life had been passed ; but it is 
only fair to say that she showed such marvellous 
power to adapt herself to her new surroundings 
that it may safely be assumed that her lapses into 
the slang of the brothel were intentional, because 
she found that they amused the king. De Gon- 
court relates that a continuous run of ill-luck at 
the card-table drew from her the ejaculation, " Ah ! 
je suis frite ! " (I am fried.) " We are bound to be- 
lieve you, Madame," replied an ill-natured wit, gath- 
ering in her stakes, "for you certainly ought to 
know." This by way of allusion to the profes- 
sion of her mother, who was cook to a celebrated 
courtesan. 

It is difficult to give any idea of the sums squan- 
dered by Madame du Barry during her reign, ex- 
cept by copious extracts from the voluminous docu- 
ments detailing those sums which are deposited in 
the " Bibliotheque Rationale." While she had not 
the same longing for acquisitions of real property 
which characterized Madame de Pompadour, she 
more than made up for it by her purchases of 
dresses and jewelry, pictures, sculpture, and the 
like, the total of which amounted to many hun- 
dreds of millions of francs. Few queens, indeed, 
have ever been able to boast of such a collection of 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 123 

jewels as those which were stolen from the favorite 
on the 10th of January, 1791, — a theft which led 
to her four voyages to England, and the consequent 
accusations of emigration and of secret missions to 
the foes of the Kepublic. 

There is in the " Bibliotheque Rationale" a man- 
uscript journal, written by one Hardy, a Parisian 
of the middle class, called " Journal des eVenenients 
tels qu'ils parviennent a ma connaissance " (Journal 
of such facts as have come to my knowledge). The 
following is one of the many entertaining bits of 
gossip to be found therein. He says that a clerical 
friend of his was dining out on the 1st of February, 
1769, and was requested by a brother of the cloth 
to drink " to the presentation." Hardy's friend 
failed to understand what he meant, and asked if 
he referred to the Presentation of our Lord at the 
Temple, which was to be commemorated the fol- 
lowing day. "No," said the priest who proposed 
the toast, "I refer to that which will take place 
to-day, if it did not come off yesterday — the presen- 
tation of the new Esther, who is to supersede 
Haman, and rescue the people of Israel from cap- 
tivity." The new Esther was Madame du Barry, 
and Haman, the Due de Choiseul, in this allegory. 

Indeed, the breathless interest excited by this im- 
portant function, which gave to the mere mistress 



124 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

the more stable character of favorite en titre, can 
hardly be exaggerated. "Du Barry had unearthed a 
Comtesse de Bdarn," says De Goncourt, " the widow 
of a Perigord gentleman, who had left her in very 
necessitous circumstances, with five children on her 
hands, and a venerable lawsuit against the Saluces 
family. He obtained for her an allowance which 
made it possible for her to appear at Court in garb 
suited to her position, and procured a judgment 
favorable to her in her lawsuit, thereby making 
sure of a sponsor." Even then, however, the func- 
tion was delayed on one pretext or another : " the 
Comtesse de Be'arn, dreading the effect of her com- 
plaisance upon her future, at one time pretended 
that she had sprained her ankle, and obstinately 
kept to her sofa for some days ; " and it was not 
until the 21st of April, 1769, that the long-looked- 
for presentation took place. The delay which 
occurred at the last moment is historical; it was 
caused by the delinquency of a hair-dresser. 

Choiseul, the bosom friend and confident of 
Madame de Pompadour, could have been influenced 
by no virtuous scruples in refusing to live on 
terms of friendship with Madame du Barry. He 
trusted too much to his established position, and to 
the need which the king had of him, and rejected 
the innumerable advances which were made to him 



INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 125 

on the part of the favorite, of whom it must be said 
that politics was as uncongenial a field of activity 
to her as it was a congenial one to Madame de 
Pompadour. She desired to be friendly to the 
Minister, and it was his overweening self-confi- 
dence which drove her into the opposite faction, and 
made her the tool of those who were opposed to all 
that Choiseul represented. A strange sight it was 
to see the woman of the street put forward by the 
party of the devotees, — their real object being to 
reinstate the Jesuits whom Madame de Pompadour 
had driven out of France. Even the stern ascetic 
Christophe de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, jug- 
gled with his conscience to avoid offending the 
favorite when Louis was on his death-bed. 

Choiseul, on the other hand, was the representative 
of the philosophers, the obstreperous Parliament, and 
the Jansenists. In his exile at Chanteloupe he was 
visited by vast numbers of his adherents, and the 
greatest and noblest names in the kingdom were 
inscribed upon the pillars there. " People were not 
more virtuous," says Saint Amand, "but opposi- 
tion was fashionable." 

It may be said of Marie Antoinette, as of Choi- 
seul, that the enmity between herself and the 
favorite was not the fault of the latter. It would 
not perhaps be surprising that the daughter of the 



126 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Caesars should have disdained the lowly-born cour- 
tesan, were it not that in so doing she was running 
directly counter to the wishes and commands of 
her mother, the politic Maria Theresa. The corres- 
pondence of the Empress with Mercy-Argenteau, 
her representative at the French Court, is copiously 
cited by Saint Amand (Les Dernieres Anne'es de 
Louis XV.). It is filled with emphatic expressions 
of the necessity of her daughter's bowing to circum- 
stances, and showing her respect for the king by 
courteous treatment of those whom he loves. 

It is, perhaps, needless to say that " Chon " is a 
very real personage. She was Mademoiselle Claire 
du Barry, sister of Comte Jean ; she was a great favo- 
rite of her sister-in-law, and the guiding spirit of 
the household. 

Zamore, too, the little toy negro, was actually 
made governor of Luciennes, and received the 
emoluments pertaining to the governorship of a 
royal chateau. It is not, however, as governor of 
Luciennes that he won his most enduring fame, 
but as the serpent who turned upon his benefactress 
and rent her asunder. 

When Louis XV. was dead of the smallpox, 
Madame du Barry was exiled ; but it was only a 
short time before Luciennes was restored to her by 
the good-natured successor of her royal lover, and 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 127 

there she lived until the Eevolution, during the last 
years of tranquillity the very dearly loved mistress 
of the Due de Cosse'-Brissac. In 1791 her jewels 
were stolen, and she unwisely called public atten- 
tion to the fact of her great wealth by offering a 
reward of two thousand louis for their recovery. 
The thieves were arrested in England, and she was 
compelled to make four journeys across the channel 
before she was able to recover them. The story of 
the accusations made against her, as a sequel of 
those voyages, is too long to be told here. All her 
servants turned against her, and none more vindic- 
tively than Zamore, who had become a zealous 
republican. On the 8th of December, 1793, she 
ascended the scaffold, and " looked through the lit- 
tle window of la Guillotine," just fifty-three days 
after the unhappy queen had lost her life on the 
same spot. " The death of Madame du Barry cost 
the conscience of the Terror a quarter of an hour 
more than that of Marie Antoinette," says De Gon- 
court. " It took the jury an hour and a quarter to 
convict in the case of the favorite." 

The "affair of La Chalotais," which is men- 
tioned so frequently in connection with the Due 
d'Aiguillon, arose out of the latter's incumbency of 
the office of military commandant of Bretagne, dur- 
ing one of the periodical revolts of the parliament 



128 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

of that restless province, which he had put down 
with great severity. The English made a descent 
upon the coast of Bretagne in 1758 ; D'Aiguillon 
defeated them at Saint-Cast, and drove them aboard 
their ships, but the Bretons claimed that the Due 
was not entitled to any credit personally, and 
accused him of hiding in a mill. 

Some one remarked in the presence of Monsieur de 
la Chalotais that " Monsieur d'Aiguillon covered him- 
self with glory at the battle of Saint-Cast." 

" With flour you mean," replied La Chalotais, who 
was procureur-ge'neral of the parliament of Bretagne. 

D'Aiguillon never forgave it, and seized the first 
opportunity to prosecute La Chalotais for an alleged 
plot to overthrow the monarchy. He was impris- 
oned, and became at once the idol of the parlia- 
ment, and eventually D'Aiguillon was replaced by 
Due de Duras. 

Guiseppe Balsamo, better known to fame as the 
Count Cagliostro, under which name he appears in the 
other romances of the Marie Antoinette cycle, was a 
charlatan of extraordinary ability who made a great 
stir in various European countries during the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century. In his hands 
free-masonry, which was then under the ban, became 
a very powerful weapon, and he was much aided in 
making dupes by his wife Lorenza Feliciani, a 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 129 

woman of rare beauty, who was also a member of 
the masonic fraternity. At one time or another he 
seems to have claimed to possess most of the 
powers which are here ascribed to him, and which 
he attributed to the supernatural connections of 
his master, Althotas, or Alhotas. His name is 
known in French history for his relations with 
the Cardinal de Eohan, and his consequent con- 
nection with the wretched affair of the necklace, 
which is the subject of the second of this series 
of romances. 

It will, perhaps, be more convenient to speak of 
Marie Antoinette at length, in connection with that 
episode which occurred after she had become queen, 
and had begun to develop those traits of character 
which came to the surface so many times, and 
wrecked so many apparent opportunities of making 
peace with the Eevolution. In this story we see 
little of her that is not sweet and lovable. With- 
out the gloomy predictions of Balsamo, she might 
well shudder at the succession of evil omens which 
welcomed her to France. The apartment which 
was prepared for her reception on the island in the 
Ehine where her Austrian escort delivered her to 
the representatives of her adopted country, was 
hung with tapestries representing the legend of 
Jason, Medea, and Croesus. For this fact we have 



130 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

no less an authority than Goethe, who was then a 
student at Strasbourg ; his reflections upon the 
impropriety of such decoration under the circum- 
stances were no less just than forcible. 

The fearful storm which interfered with the cele- 
bration at Versailles was fittingly capped by the 
horrible slaughter in Paris the following night, 
which is so graphically described by Dumas. The 
Dauphiness was driving into Paris for the first 
time to see the illuminations, when she was met 
by intelligence of the disaster, and drove sadly back 
to Versailles. 

To one who has studied Eousseau in his own 
" Confessions," the glimpses of the testy, suspicious 
old philosophe are by no means the least attractive 
portions of the book. 

Although this story closes with the death of 
Louis XV., fifteen years before the taking of the 
Bastille, the introduction of Marat, the gloomy 
and repulsive fanatic, and above all his reappear- 
ance on the last page, give a distinct forecast of 
what the future had in store. 



MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1770 to 1774. 

Louis XV., King of France. 

Marie Jeanne de Vaubernier, Comtesse Dubarry, his 

mistress. 
Louis Auguste, Due de Berry, the 

Dauphiu, afterwards Louis XVI., I dsons of the Kin 
comte dartois, 
Comte de Provence, 
Princess Louise de Prance, 
Princess Adelaide, 
Princess Yictoire, 
Princess Sophie, 
Due de Chartres, afterwards Philippe ^galite, Due d'Orleans. 
Due de Choiseul, Prime Minister of Prance. 
Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria. 
Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria and Dauphiness of 

Prance. 
Due de la Vauguyon, tutor of the royal princes. 
Comte de Coigny, gentleman-in-waiting to the Dauphin. 
The Countess op Langershausen, waiting on Marie Antoinette. 
Comte de Stainville, brother-in-law of M. de Choiseul and 

Governor of Strasbourg. 
Cardinal Louis de Rohan. 



daughters of Louis XV. 



132 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



Marechal de Richelieu, 

Due d'Aiguillon, his nephew, M. de 

Choiseul's successor, 
M. de Ehonsac, Richelieu's son, 
Prince de Soubise, 
Marechal de Luxembourg, 
Prince de Guemenee, 
Prince de Conde, 

COMTE DE LA VaUDRAYE, 

M. d'Alambert, 

M. de Malesherbes, 

DUC DE LA YRILLIERE, 

Due de Tesmes, a hunchback, 

DUCHESSE DE ChOISEUL, 

Duchesse de Grammont, M. de Choiseul's sister, 

Princesse de Guemenee, 

Comtesse d'Egmont, Richelieu's daughter, 

Marquise de Mirepoix, 

Ddchesse d'Ayen, 

Baronne d'Alogny, 

Duchesse de Noailles, 

Marquise de Savigny, 

Madame d'Epinay, 

Madame de Polastron, 

Comte de Sartines, Lieutenant of Police. 

La Fouine, his clerk. 

M. de Seguier, Advocate-General. 

M. Bignon, Provost of the Merchants. 

M. de la Chalotais, Attorney- General. 

M. de Praslin, of the Choiseul ministry. 

m. be bertin, , ot the Ai illoii minist 

Abbe Terray, ) 

M. de Maupeou, Vice-Chancellor. 

M. de Boynes, of the Parliament. 

Monsieur Remy, Yicar of St. Johns, Strasburg. 



gentlemen of the 
French Court. 



ladies of the 
French 
Court. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



133 



chiefs of a secret brotherhood. 



Baron Joseph Balsamo, otherwise known as Acharat and 

Comte de Fenix, afterwards Cagliostro. 
Lorenza Feliciani, his wife. 
Althotas, a philosopher. 
Emmanuel Swedenborg, 
John Paul Jones, 
Lord Fairfax, 
Sciefport, a Russian, 
Ximenes, a Spaniard, 
John Casper Lavater, 
Jean Paul Marat, 
Baron de Taverney Maison Rouge. 
Claire Andree de Taverney, his daughter. 
Chevalier Philippe de Taverney Maison Rouge, Andree's 

brother. 
Nicole Legay, Andree's waiting-maid. 
Gilbert, a poor youth, in love with Andree. 
La Brie, servant of Baron de Taverney. 
Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
M. de Voltaire, 
M. Caron de Beaumarchais, 
M. de Holbach, 

M. DE LA HARPE, 

M. Diderot, 

Marmontel, 

M. de Jussieu, botanist. 

M. Boucher, painter. 

M. Pigale, sculptor. 

Chevalier de Muy. 

M. Mique, the King's architect. 

Monsieur Louis, Marie Antoinette's physician. 

Monsieur Bordeu, ) . . . , T . __ 

, T tit * c physicians to Louis XV. 

Monsieur la Martiniere, ) 

Anastasie Euphemie Rodolphe, Comtesse de Beam. 



k writers in the reign of Louis XV. 



134 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Maitre Plageot, her lawyer. 

Marguerite, his servant. 

Chonchon, sister of Madame Dubarry. 

Vicomte Jean Dubarry. 

Zamore, Comtesse Dubarry's negro page. 

Mademoiselle Sylvie, 1 Comtesse Dubm/ , maids . 



Mademoiselle Doree, 

Sebastian, a courier in the service of Madame de Grammont. 

M. de Beausire, Nicole Legay's lover. 

M. Lubin, court hairdresser. 

Madame Lubin. 

Lebel, valet to Louis XY. 

Rafte, Richelieu's secretary. 

M. Grange, an intendent. 

Maitre Niquet, a notary. 

Maitre Guildou, an attorney. 

Therese, Rousseau's wife. 

Fritz, Balsamo's servant. 

Marguerite, servant of Andree de Taverney. 

M. Leonard, a hairdresser. 

Comtois, a coachman. 

Courtin, a postilion. 

Dame Grivette, Marat's servant. 

Havard, a patient at the Hotel Dieu Hospital. 

M. Guillotin, M.D. 

Simon, a shoemaker's apprentice. 

Pitou, a peasant of Villers-Cotteret. 

Madeleine Pitou, his wife. 

Ange Pitou, their son. 

Angelique, Pitou's sister. 

Captain of the "Adonis." 



THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

A cruel fate seemed to have ordained that from 
the moment that Louis XVI. and his lovely Aus- 
trian queen ascended the throne of France, the 
worst possible construction should be placed upon 
their every act, however innocent or well-meant in 
itself. The verdict of all investigators into the 
proximate causes and the course of the French 
Revolution — of all, that is, who can fairly make 
any claim to impartiality, and their name is le- 
gion — is so nearly unanimous that it has come 
to be a mere truism, that the unhappy king and 
queen were the victims of the time in which they 
lived ; that they reaped the harvest sown by their 
predecessors, and that the greatest crime that can 
be attributed to them is lack of judgment, — a fail- 
ure to appreciate and acquiesce in the inevitable 
trend of events. 

Says Carlyle, in his essay on the " Diamond Neck- 
lace," apostrophizing Marie Antoinette : — 



136 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

"Thy fault in the French Revolution was that 
thou wert the Symbol of the Sin and Misery of a 
thousand years; that with St. Bartholomew and 
Jacqueries, with Gabelles and Dragonnades and 
Parcs-aux-Cerfs, the heart of mankind was filled 
full, and foamed over into all-involving madness. . . . 
As poor peasants, how happy, worthy had ye two 
been ! But by evil destiny ye were made a King 
and Queen of; and so both once more — are become 
an astonishment and a byword to all times." 

The wrong note was struck when Louis XVI. in 
the first days of his reign, professing, and honestly 
without doubt, a purpose to institute useful reforms, 
and to avoid the scandals which had disgraced the 
closing years of his grandfather's reign, went back 
half a century for his Prime Minister, and unearthed 
the Comte de Maurepas, who had been in retirement 
since he was forced out of office by Madame de 
Pompadour, thirty years before. We can read in 
many places — for instance, in the " Mdmoires " of the 
Comte de Se'gur, the friend of Lafayette — the unfor- 
tunate impression that was produced by this reversion 
to the reactionary ideas of the last generation. The 
wrong note was struck, and yet it turned out to be 
the key-note of all that was to follow. 

Let us glance now for a moment at the first 
occasion given by Marie Antoinette for unfriendly 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 137 

criticism after she became queen. It has been 
described by Madame Campan, the queen's first 
lady-in-waiting. 

It seems that the new king and queen received 
visits of condolence on the death of Louis XV. at 
La Muette, and were condoled with by a large assem- 
blage, composed in great part of venerable dow- 
agers with marvellous constructions in the way of 
head-gear, which made some of them " appear some- 
what ridiculous." But the queen's dignity was 
equal to the occasion, and " she was not guilty of 
the grave fault of laying aside the state she was 
bound to preserve," although the kittenish behav- 
ior of one of her dames du palais laid her open to 
the charge of doing so. The Marquise de Clermont- 
Tonnerre, tired of standing, as her functions re- 
quired, sat down on the floor, " behind the fence 
formed by the hoops of the queen and her ladies." 
There she amused herself by " twitching the dresses 
of the ladies, and a thousand other tricks." The 
queen was moved to laughter, and several times 
placed her fan before her face to hide her smiles, 
to the intense wrath of the elderly females present, 
who attributed her amusement to their appearance. 
The inevitable chanson appeared next day. Madame 
Campan remembered only the chorus, which ran 
thus, — 



138 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

" Little Queen, you must not be 

So saucy with your twenty years : 
Your ill-used courtiers soon will see 
You pass once more the barriers. 

Fal lal la, fal lal la." 

" More than fifteen years after this," says Madame 
Campan, "I heard some old ladies, in the most re- 
tired part of Auvergne, relating all the particulars 
of the day of public condolence for the late king, 
on which, as they said, the queen had laughed in 
the faces of the sexagenarian duchesses and prin- 
cesses who had thought it their duty to appear on 
the occasion." 

This incident is given at length because it is typi- 
cal of the whole experience of the poor queen, 
whose every act and every word was perverted, and 
with the assistance, it must be said, of her own bad 
judgment and the king's, on almost every occasion 
was made to serve as a nail in the coffin of her 
popularity. 

Madame Campan's pages are full of similar epi- 
sodes, trivial in appearance, but really, as seen in 
the light of subsequent events, possessing a sinister 
significance. If the effects of Madame de Clermont- 
Tonnerre's playfulness lasted fifteen years, we may 
easily understand that the wretched affair which 
forms the groundwork of the romance contained in 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 139 

these volumes had much wider and more far-reach- 
ing consequences than, taken by itself, it would 
seem to merit. 

It should be said that the crisis of this affair of 
the necklace (" Affaire du Collier ") came directly 
upon the heels of the first performances of the much 
discussed " Mariage de Figaro " of Beaumarchais. It 
had been kept off the stage for some time by the 
king's order, on account of divers Voltairean and 
levelling doctrines enunciated in it, and was finally 
produced, substantially unchanged, by virtue of 
a permit granted with the understanding that 
the objectionable passages had been stricken out 
It was received with such thunders of applause 
that the king did not venture to stop it; but the 
author was imprisoned, and public opinion was very 
outspoken. 

With regard to the actual facts concerning the 
famous necklace, it may be said, first, that they are 
largely shrouded in impenetrable mystery, and, sec- 
ondly, that, so far as they can be deciphered with 
any certainty, they substantially agree with the 
version given by Dumas. 

The materials for unravelling the very tangled 
thread are voluminous, consisting largely of the 
absolutely inconsistent statements made by the vari- 
ous defendants, and which form part of the records of 



HO INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

the trial. There is also a life of Madame de La 
Motte written by herself ; a letter from London from 
the pen of Cagliostro ; the memoirs of Abbe* Georgel, 
private secretary of Cardinal de Eohan, and Madame 
Campan. But the most important evidence — indeed, 
the only really important evidence — was burned up 
by Abbe* Georgel, in obedience to the note written 
by Eohan at the time of his arrest, which reached 
him before seals were put upon the Cardinal's papers. 
Other presumably damnatory documents were de- 
stroyed by Madame de La Motte before her arrest. 
All the existing evidence Carlyle claims, and un- 
doubtedly with perfect truth, to have sifted and 
weighed carefully ; and his conclusions demonstrate 
the impossibility of ever coming at the whole truth 
as to the proper apportionment of responsibility 
between La Motte and Eohan. 

The only approach to accurate information as 
to the date when the necklace was put together 
is the statement of Madame Campan that it was 
originally intended for Madame du Barry, who 
"went into half pay" 1 in 1774, when Louis XV. 
died. 

To the dismay of Boehmer, Marie Antoinette 
refused to consider the purchase of the necklace. 
"We have more need of seventy-fours than of 

i Carlyle. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 141 

Necklaces," she said. For three years after that, it 
was hawked around among the crowned heads of 
Europe, but to no purpose. " The age of Chivalry- 
is gone, and that of Bankruptcy is come." Among 
others, "the Portuguese Ambassador praises, but 
will not purchase." 

At last, one day, poor Boehmer, who, as Court 
Jeweller, had some peculiar privileges, bursts into 
the queen's apartment, flings himself at her Majes- 
ty's feet, and entreats her either to buy his neck- 
lace, or give him permission to drown himself in the 
Seine. She coolly suggests that he might, as a 
possible third course, take the necklace to pieces, 
and dismisses him. 

The foundation of the queen's dislike, almost 
hatred, of Cardinal de Eohan, seems to have had 
its origin in a despatch sent by him while he 
was Ambassador at Vienna, to this effect : " Maria 
Theresa stands, indeed, with the handkerchief in 
one hand, weeping for the woes of Poland; but 
with the sword in the other hand, ready to cut 
Poland in sections and take her share." D'Aiguil- 
lon, who was then minister, communicates the 
letter to Louis XV., and he to Du Barry, " to 
season her souper." It became a court-joke, and 
got to the ears of the Dauphiness, who never 
forgot it. 



142 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

If, as seems very doubtful, the Cardinal did speak 
disparagingly of the princess to her mother, he 
must have repented it in sackcloth and ashes, for 
there seems to be no question as to the reality of 
his passion for her, dating from his return to France 
soon after the death of Louis XV. " Through ten 
long years," says Carlyle, " of new resolve and new 
despondency, of flying from Saverne to Paris and 
from Paris to Saverne, has it lasted ; hope deferred 
making the heart sick." Meanwhile he had se- 
cured the Archbishopric (of Strasburg), the Grand 
Almonership, the Cardinalship, " and lastly, to ap- 
pease the Jews, that fattest Commendatorship, 
founded by King Thierri, the Do-nothing. . . . 
' All good ! ' languidly croaks Eohan ; ' yet all not 
the one thing needful : alas, the queen's eyes do 
not yet shine on me.' 

"Abbe' Georgel admits, in his own polite diplo- 
matic way, that the Mud-volcano [Rohan] was 
much agitated by these trials; and in time quite 
changed. Monseigneur deviated into cabalistic 
courses, after elixirs, philters, and the philoso- 
pher's stone ; that is, the volcanic steam grew 
thicker and heavier ; at last, by Cagliostro's magic 
(for Cagliostro and the Cardinal by elective affin- 
ity must meet), it sank into the opacity of perfect 
London fog." 



INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 143 

It is said that Guiseppe or "Beppo" Balsamo, 
otherwise Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, in his 
younger days took some pains to procure from a 
country vicar, under the falsest of pretences, " a bit 
of cotton steeped in holy oils." This seemingly in- 
significant circumstance is given much importance 
by Carlyle, in his extremely searching and thorough 
analysis of this remarkable character, as tending to 
prove that there was at the bottom of his nature 
" a certain musk-grain of real superstitious belief." 
It must be said, however, that history affords but 
slight justification for endowing him with any of 
the nobler qualities which are attributed to him 
in these pages. From the very beginning of his 
career as a gamin in the streets of Palermo, where 
he was born in 1743, down to his death in prison at 
Eome fifty-odd years later, he seldom failed to ex- 
hibit all the distinctive traits of an impostor and 
a charlatan. His claim, so often touched upon by 
Dumas, that he had lived for several thousand 
years, is well illustrated by the historical fact that 
he was wont, when passing a statue of Christ, " to 
pause with a wondrously accented plaintive ' Ha ! ' as 
of recognition, as of thousand years' remembrance." 

It will be remembered that, in the introduction 
to the " Memoirs of a Physician," Dumas mentions 
the Swiss Lavater as one of the prominent actors 



144 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

in the mystic assemblage on Mont Tonnerre. The 
association between the two really existed ; and the 
impression made by the pupil of Althotas upon the 
worthy and learned savant is a convincing proof of 
his marvellous power of imposition. Lavater said 
of him: — 

" Cagliostro — a man such as few are ; in whom, how- 
ever, I am not a believer. Oh that he were simple of 
heart and humble, like a child; that he had feeling for 
the simplicity of the gospel and the majesty of the 
Lord! Who were so great as he? Cagliostro often 
tells what is not true, and promises what he does not 
perform. Yet do I nowise hold his operations as decep' 
tion, though they are not what he calls them." 

The problems presented by the unexampled career 
of this man were grappled with by Schiller, giving 
rise to his unfinished novel of the " Geisterseher ; " 
and by Goethe, who relieved his mind from the 
hold the matter took upon it by writing the drama 
called the " Gross-Kophta." After wandering many 
years through many lands, Cagliostro found at Stras- 
burg " the richest, inflammablest, most open-handed 
dupe ever yet vouchsafed him," in the person of the 
Prince-Cardinal Louis de Eohan, of whom the Abbe* 
Georgel wrote that " he came at last to have no 
other will than Cagliostro's." 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 145 

His connection with the affair of the necklace is 
rather problematical, except in so far as he was the 
confidant and mystical adviser of the Cardinal, whose 
hopes, founded upon his supposed correspondence 
with the queen, he undoubtedly nursed with his 
predictions of great power and influence to come 
by means of it. 

The early history of Jeanne de Saint-Eemy, by 
courtesy Countess, styled also of Yalois, is told by 
Dumas with substantial accuracy, and need not be 
repeated here. 

She married Monsieur de La Motte, a private in 
the Gendarmes, at Bar-sur-Aube, and dubbed him 
Count, by virtue of her own Countess-ship. 

In 1783 she first met Eohan at Saverne, whither 
she went with Madame de Boulainvilliers ; and there 
and then, so far as the workings of her ingenious 
mind can be followed, she seems to have formed the 
outline of the scheme which developed into the 
barefaced deception of Eohan, and the theft of 
the necklace. 

For eighteen months after the scheme had taken 
shape in her brain, she carried on the fictitious cor- 
respondence with the Cardinal, assisted by Eetau de 
Villette, an associate of her husband, " in the sub- 
terranean shades of rascaldom," and finally ventured 
upon the audacious deception, in which Dumas makes 



145 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Nicole Oliva Legay figure as her accomplice. That 
part, however, was really played by a Parisian cour- 
tesan named Essigny, known to history under the 
name of Gay d'Oliva, or Olisva, which was given 
her by La Motte, the latter form being an anagram 
of Valois. 

If Madame Campan is to be credited, Marie An- 
toinette had never seen Madame de La Motte, but 
the Countess had once met one Desclos, a valet of 
the queen's bed-chamber, at the house of a surgeon 
at Versailles. This Desclos figured prominently in 
the deception put upon the Cardinal; for Eetau 
de Villette personated him, or is supposed to have 
done so, on several momentous occasions when the 
Countess found it necessary to produce a duly ac- 
credited agent of the queen. 

Thus, then, a bargain is arranged between Boehmer, 
still with a necklace for sale, and " Madame Lamotte 
de Saint-Eemy de Saint-Shifty," as representing 
Monsieur de Eohan. On the 1st of February, 1785, 
the famous jewel was delivered to the Cardinal, who 
signed a receipt for it : by him it was handed over 
to the Countess at Versailles for transmission to 
the queen. A knock is heard at the door, and 
Monseigneur retires to an alcove whence he can 
see what takes place. Enters valet Desclos, alias 
Eetau de Villette, who receives the precious casket, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. H7 

with solemn injunctions and promises, and retires. 
" Thus softly, silently, like a very dream, flits away 
our solid necklace, — through the Horn Gate of 
Dreams." 

It was taken to pieces and sold under the aus- 
pices of " Count " de La Motte, in London and else- 
where, long before the explosion. 

Let us now listen for a moment to Madame Cam- 
pan, as she relates the circumstances under which 
the explosion took place. Her narrative naively 
displays the almost incredible lack of judgment on 
the part of the queen, who, while she was undoubt- 
edly free from any guilt in the transaction, seemed 
fated to act as if she were guilty. It will be noticed 
that the alleged signature of the queen, " Marie An- 
toinette de France" was in the possession of the Car- 
dinal, and that it was made a subject of accusation 
against him that he should not have recognized the 
impossibility of the queen's having so designated 
herself : — 

"When Madame Sophie was born, the queen told 
me that Monsieur de Sainte-James, a rich financier, 
had apprised her that Boehmer was still intent upon 
the sale of his necklace, and that she ought, for her 
own satisfaction, to endeavor to learn what the man 
had done with it : she desired me, the first time I should 
meet him, to speak with him about it, as if from the 



148 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

interest I took in his welfare. I did so, and lie told 
me he had been fortunate enough to sell it at Constanti- 
nople for the favorite Sultana. I told the queen, 
who was delighted to hear it, but could not under- 
stand how the Sultan came to purchase his diamonds 
in Paris. 

" She long avoided seeing Boehmer, being fearful of 
his rash character. 

" On the baptism of the Due d'Angouleme in 1785, 
the king gave him a diamond epaulette and buckles, 
and directed Boehmer to deliver them to the queen. 
He presented them on her return from mass, and at 
the same time handed her a letter in the form of a peti- 
tion. In this he told her that he was happy to see her 
' in possession of the finest diamonds in Europe/ and 
begged her not to forget him. The queen read the 
letter aloud, and saw nothing in it but a proof of 
mental aberration; she lighted the paper at a wax 
taper standing near her, as she had some letters to 
seal, saying, c It is not worth keeping. ' She after- 
wards much regretted the loss of this enigmatical 
memorial, 

"On the 3d of August Boehmer came to me at my 
country house at Crespy [the first payment was to be 
made July 30th, but, of course, was not]. He was ex- 
tremely uneasy at not having received any answer from 
the queen, and asked me if I had no commission for 
him. I told him no. . . . i But/ said Boehmer, i the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 149 

answer to the letter I handed her — to whom must 
I apply for that?' 'To nobody,' I answered; 'the 
queen burned it without understanding it.' 'Ah! 
Madame, ' he exclaimed, ' that is impossible ; the queen 
knows that she has money to pay me ! ' " 

He then proceeded to inform her that the queen 
wanted the necklace, and had had it purchased for 
her by Cardinal de Eohan. 

"'You are deceived/ I exclaimed; 'the queen has 
not once spoken to the Cardinal since his return from 
Vienna: there is not a man at Court less favorably 
looked upon. ' ' You are deceived yourself, Madame, ' 
said Boehmer; 'she sees him so much in private that 
it was to him she gave thirty thousand francs, which 
were paid me as an instalment : she took them in his 
presence out of the little secretaire of Sevres porcelain, 
next the fireplace in her room.' 'And the Cardinal 
told you all this ? ' ' Yes, Madame, himself.' ' What 
a detestable plot ! ' I cried. ' Indeed, Madame, I be- 
gin to be much alarmed, for his Eminence assured me 
that the queen would wear the necklace on Whit-Sun- 
day ; but I did not see it upon her, and that was why I 
wrote to her Majesty.' 

"Boehmer never said one word to me about the 
woman Lamotte, and her name was mentioned for the 
first time by the Cardinal in his answers to the inter- 
rogatories put to him before the king." 



150 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Boehmer subsequently had an interview with the 
queen, after he had reported to the Cardinal the re- 
sult of his conversation with Madame Campan. He 
related to her all that he had been made to believe 
had taken place between her and himself through 
the medium of the Cardinal. He refused to listen 
to her denials, and kept repeating : " Madame, the 
time for pretending has gone by : condescend to 
confess that you have my necklace, and let some 
assistance be given me, or my bankruptcy will soon 
bring everything to light." 

It was after this interview that the queen told 
the Baron de Breteuil the whole story. He was, as 
is well known, an inveterate enemy of Bohan, and 
was only too glad of the opportunity to disgrace 
him. 

"On the following Sunday, the 15th August, being 
the Assumption, at twelve o'clock, at the very moment 
when the Cardinal, dressed in his pontifical garments, 
was about to proceed to the chapel, he was sent for to 
the king's closet where the queen was." 

He was then questioned by the king, admitted 
that he had been duped, and produced the alleged 
letter from the queen, signed " Marie Antoinette de 
France," and offered to pay for the necklace him- 
self. He became much confused, and made con- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 151 

tradictory statements, and was at last given into 
custody, but was able, as stated above, to provide 
for the destruction of his papers, whereby an im- 
penetrable cloud was thrown over the whole affair. 
He was followed to the Bastille by Madame de La 
Motte and her husband, Cagliostro, Eetau de Vil- 
lette, and Mademoiselle Gay d'Oliva. The trial 
dragged through many weary months, during which 
unheard-of efforts were made by the family of the 
Cardinal as well as the clergy, even to the Pope 
himself, to procure for him the right to be tried at 
Eome. " The conduct of the king and queen," says 
Madame Campan, " was equally and loudly censured 
in the apartments of Versailles, and in the hotels 
and coffee-houses of Paris." This was because they 
did not hush the matter up. What would have 
been said, had they tried to do so ? 

On the 31st of May, 1786, " at nine in the evening, 
after a sitting of eighteen hours," the Parliament of 
Paris solemnly pronounced judgment : — 

Cardinal de Rohan goes scot-free: " Countess de La- 
motte is shaven on the head, branded with red-hot iron 
V ( Voleuse) on both shoulders, and confined for life to 
the Salpetriere; her Count wandering uncertain, with 
diamonds for sale, over the British Empire ; the Sieur 
de Villette, for handling a queen's pen, is banished 
forever; the too queenlike Demoiselle Gay d'Oliva 



152 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

(with her unfathered infant) 'put out of Court:' and 
Grand Cophta Cagliostro, liberated indeed, but pillaged, 
and ordered forthwith to take himself away." 

The king, persisting in his view that the Cardinal 
and the woman La Motte were equally culpable, 
sought to restore the balance of justice by exiling the 
Cardinal to La-Chaise-Dieu, and suffering Madame de 
La Motte to escape a few days after her incarcera- 
tion, thus confirming Paris in the opinion that the 
latter had really interested the queen herself. 

" Thus," says Carlyle, " does the miserable pickle- 
herring tragedy of the Diamond Necklace wind it- 
self up." 

Of the romantic as distinguished from the histori- 
cal portions of the " Queen's Necklace " little need 
be said, save that one has not far to seek in French 
history of the last century to find precedents in 
profusion for the unpaternal conduct of the elder 
Taverney. Andr^e and Philippe are still struggling 
against the cruel fate which seems to have doomed 
them to know no part of life but its sorrows ; while 
we are introduced for the first time to Olivier de 
Charny, of whom we are to see much more in the 
later volumes of this cycle. 

To the historical characters of the story we must 
add Beausire, who is thus mentioned in a manu- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 153 

script note to the collection of documents published 
under the title of " Affaire, du Collier " : — 

"Gay d'Oliva got married some years afterward to 
one Beausire, an ex-noble, formerly attached to the 
D'Artois household. In 1790 he was Captain of the 
National Guard Company of the Temple. He then 
retired to Choisy, and managed to be named Procureur 
of that Commune 5 he finally employed himself in draw- 
ing up lists of proscription in the Luxembourg Prison, 
where he played the part of informer." 

Him also, and Nicole or Oliva, we shall meet 
again. 

Once more, as the story closes, we are reminded by 
the apparition of the ghoul-like Marat, accompanied 
by the more human Eobespierre, of the gradual ap- 
proach of the cataclysm. 

In the volumes which succeed we shall find them 
no longer hovering on the outskirts of the crowd, 
but taking a too prominent part in the world, — 
shaping events which are there chronicled. 



THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Period, 1784-1785. 

Louis XVI., King of Trance. 

Marie Antoinette, his Queen. 

Comte de Provence, j brothers rf ^ Ki 

COMTE d'ArTOIS, ) 

COMTESSE D'ARTOIS. 

Due d'Angouleme, son of Corate d'Artois. 

Due d'Orleans. 

Prince sse de Lamballe. 

The Princess Royal. 

Gustavus, King of Sweden, visiting Richelieu under the assumed 

name of Comte de Haga. 
Prince Louis, Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of Prance. 
M. de Calonne, Minister of Finance. 
Baron de Breteuil, Keeper of the Seals. 
Marechal de Castries, Minister of the Navy. 
M. de Lapeyrouse, a navigator. 
Marechal de Richelieu. 
Comtesse Dubarry. 

Comte de Launay, Governor of the Bastille. 
M. de Crosne, Lieutenant of Police. 

Marquis de Pavras, Captain of the Guards of Comte de Provence. 
Marquis de Lafayette. 
Comte Cagliostro. 

Jeanne de Saint-Remy Yalois, Comtesse de La Motte. 
Comte de La Motte. 



Y 



156 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

M. Doillot, Madame de La Motte's counsel. 

Admiral de Suffren. 

Comte Olivier de Charny, his nephew, 

Chevalier Philippe de Taverney Maison I m love with the 

Rouge, ' Queen - 

Andree de Taverney, maid-of-honor to Marie Antoinette. 
Baron de Taverney Maison Rouge. 
Mademoiselle Oliva, formerly called Nicole Legay. 
M. de Beausire, her lover. 
Toussaint, son of Beausire and Oliva. 
Manoel, a Portuguese adventurer. 

_,' ' l jewellers, in possession of the diamond necklace. 

M. Bossange, ) 

Retau de Yilette, a journalist. 

Abbe Lekel, Almoner of the Bastille. 

M. de Suza, the Portuguese Ambassador. 

M. Ducorneau, Chancellor of the Portuguese Embassy. 

M. Caron de Beaumarchais, dramatic writer. 

M. Necker. 

Doctor Mesmer. 

Doctor Deslon, a disciple of Mesmer. 

M. de Bergasse, one of Mesmer's patients. 

Saint-Martin, teacher of spiritualism. 

Maximilien de Robespierre. 

Jean Paul Marat. 

M. Breton, Clerk of the Court judging Madame de La Motte. 

Marquis de Condorcet^ 

Comte de Coigny, 

M. de Lauzun, 

M. de Yaudreuil, 

M. de Conde, 

M. de Tremouille, 

M. de Penthievre, 

Baron de Planta, 

Madame de Polignac, 



• of the French Court. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 157 

Madame Duval, lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. 

Madame de Misery, first lady of the bed-chamber. 

Madame Patrix, lady's maid to the Queen. 

Dr. Louis, the Queen's physician. 

Weber, Marie Antoinette's coachman. 

M. Leonard, her hairdresser. 

Laurent, a porter at the palace. 

M. Lenoir, an architect. 

The Major-Domo oe Marechal de Richelieu. 

Clotilde, Madame de La Motte's servant. 

Aldegonde, Retau de Vilette's servant. 

M. Eingret, a Paris upholsterer. 

Landry, Remy, and Sylvain, his apprentices. 

Hubert, a keeper at the Bastille. 

Madame Hubert, his wife. 

Saint-Georges, a skater. 

Guyon, a turnkey at the Bastille. 



ANGE PITOU. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

On Christmas Day, 1753, Lord Chesterfield wrote 
from Paris, summing up his observations on the 
state of France : " In short, all the symptoms which 
I have ever met with in history, previous to great 
changes and revolutions in government, now exist 
and daily increase in France." 

This, being written so early and by a foreigner, 
is perhaps the most noteworthy of the prophecies 
of disaster to come which were trumpeted forth 
by so many keen-sighted intellects during the last 
half of the eighteenth century. It was floating 
in the air; it was written upon the faces of the 
starving, down-trodden people, who found them- 
selves burdened with this tax and that tax, with 
tithes and tallies, from which the nobility and 
clergy were exempt ; while on the other hand, the 
luxury and extravagance of those privileged classes 
grew every day more wanton, and their vices more 
shameless. Upon such a foundation the philoso- 



160 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

pliers and encyclopedists had built solidly and well, 
so that Voltaire wrote exultingly of the "glorious 
sights " which the young men of his day would 
live to see; wherefore they were greatly to be 
envied ! 

The old Marquis de Mirabeau, father of him 
who became so prominent a figure during the early 
months of the Kevolution, — a curious, crabbed old 
fellow, who called himself the " friend of men," and 
whose peculiarities are described by Dumas in the 
" Comtesse de Charny," — wrote in his memoirs a 
description of a peasant's holiday which he wit- 
nessed in the provinces about the time of the death 
of Louis XV. (1774). After describing the dance 
which ended in a battle, and "the frightful men, 
or rather frightful wild animals, ... of gigantic 
stature, heightened by high wooden clogs, . . . their 
faces haggard and covered with long greasy hair, — 
the upper part of the visage waxing pale, the lower, 
distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel laugh 
and a sort of ferocious impatience," — he moralizes 
thus : " And these people pay the taille ! And 
you want, further, to take their salt from them ! 
And you know not what it is you are stripping 
barer, or as you call it, governing, — what, by a 
spurt of your pen, in its cold, dastard indifference, 
you will fancy you can starve always with impunity, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 161 

always till the catastrophe come ! Ah, Madame, 
such government by blindman's-buff, stumbling 
along too far, will end in a general overturn." 

It is curious to notice with what unanimity the 
good intentions of Louis XVI. are admitted, almost 
taken for granted, by all writers upon this period, 
except the virulent pamphleteers of the day. Even 
Michelet admits it, though somewhat grudgingly, — 
Michelet, who went out of his way to charge Louis 
XV., whose load of sin was heavy enough in all 
conscience, with a foul crime for which there seems 
to be no shadow of authority. 

But it is hard to convince one's self that the 
general overturn could have been avoided, even had 
the will and character of the young king been as 
worthy of praise as his impulses and intentions 
undoubtedly were. Hastened it was, beyond ques- 
tion, by his weakness at critical moments, by his 
subserviency to the will of the queen, which was 
exerted uninterruptedly, and with what now seems 
like fatal perversity, in the wrong direction, during 
the years when there was still a chance, at least, of 
saving the monarchy. It was through the influence 
of the queen and her intimate circle that step after 
step, which, if taken in time, would have made a 
favorable impression upon an impressionable people, 
"whose nature it was to love their kings," was 



162 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

delayed until it was, so to say, extorted, and hence 
bereft of all appearance of a willing, voluntary 
concession. Numerous instances of this fatality, if 
we may so call it, are told by Dumas ; notably the 
day's postponement of the king's journey to Paris 
after the day of the Bastille. 

With the virtuous, philosophic Turgot, "who 
had a whole reformed France in his head," for 
Controller-General of the Finances, the reign of 
Louis XYI. seemed to start off under the best of 
auspices. But, as Carlyle tersely puts it, "Turgot 
has faculties, honesty, insight, heroic volition, 
but the Fortunatus's purse he has not. Sanguine 
controller-general ! a whole pacific French Eevolu- 
tion may stand schemed in the head of the thinker, 
but who shall pay the unspeakable 'indemnities' 
that will be needed ? Alas ! far from that ; on the 
very threshold of the business he proposes that the 
clergy, the noblesse, the very parliaments, be sub- 
jected to taxes like the people ! One shriek of 
indignation and astonishment reverberates through 
all the chateau galleries ; . . . the poor king, who 
had written to him a few weeks ago, 'You and I 
are the only ones who have the people's interest at 
heart,' must write now a dismissal, and let the 
French Bevolution accomplish itself, pacifically or 
not, as it can." 



INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 163 

To Turgot succeeded Necker, also a skilful and 
honest financier, also with schemes of peaceful 
reform in his head. For five years he carried the 
burden ; and at last he, too, was driven to propose 
the taxation of clergy and nobility, and thereupon 
to take his departure, May, 1781. 

Under the short administrations of Joly de 
Fleury and D'Ormesson, matters failed to improve 
(as indeed, how could they do otherwise?), until 
on the retirement of the latter, when the king 
purchased Eambouillet, without consulting him, in 
the autumn of 1783, " matters threaten to come to 
a still-stand," says Carlyle. 

At such a crisis destiny decreed that M. de 
Calonne should be put forward to fill the vacancy, 
— a man of indisputable genius, " before all things, 
for borrowing." 

" Hope radiates from his face, persuasion hangs 
on his tongue. For all straits he has present 
remedy, and will make the world roll on wheels 
before him." 

In the "Diamond Necklace," Dumas has given 
us a faithful picture of Calonne and his method of 
exploiting his financial genius. His grandiloquent, 
" Madame, if it is but difficult, it is done ; if it is 
impossible, it shall be done," seems hardly to stamp 
him as the man for the place at that critical period, 



164 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

however great may have been the felicity of the 
(Eil-de-Bceuf under the temporary plenty which re- 
sulted from the policy of " borrowing at any price." 

It would be hard to exaggerate the effect upon 
the growing aspirations of the French people after 
the unfamiliar something which they came to call 
" liberty," of the result of the struggle in America, 
in which the cause of the colonists was so power- 
fully supported by the little band of Frenchmen of 
whom Lafayette was the most prominent and the 
most notable. He returned to France in 1783, to 
be dubbed in some quarters " Scipio Americanus." 

The scandalous affair of the necklace was, as we 
have heretofore seen, seized upon by the enemies of 
the queen as a weapon with which to assail her 
reputation, although her absolute innocence of any 
guilty connection with it is now beyond doubt. 
The results of this unfortunate episode — the " im- 
mense rumor and conjecture from all mankind," 
coupled with the slanderous charges made by 
Madame Lamotte in a letter from London after 
her escape from the Salp^triere — went far towards 
creating the unreasoning hatred of the "Austrian 
woman," which she herself did so little to assuage 
when the clouds became blacker than night, and 
began to emit the thunder and lightning of the 
Eevolution. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 165 

In the spring of 1787, Calonne, his borrowing 
powers being at an end, conceived the idea of con- 
voking the " Notables " — an expedient unheard of 
for one hundred and sixty years — to sanction his 
new plan of taxation. They met on the 22d of 
February, 1787, one hundred and thirty-seven of 
them, "men of the sword, men of the robe, peers, 
dignified clergy, parliamentary presidents," with 
seven princes of the blood to preside over the seven 
bureaux, — "a round gross in all." They would 
have none of Calonne or his plans; and he was 
dismissed in April, after which the " Notables " sat 
until May 25, "treating of all manner of public 
things," and then first were the States-General 
mentioned. 

Calonne was succeeded by Cardinal Lome'nie de 
Brienne, — a dissolute, worthless sexagenarian, who 
devised various tax-edicts, stamp-taxes, and the like, 
all of which the Parliament of Paris refused to 
register. The expedient of a Bed of Justice was 
resorted to, and resulted in the most ominous of 
all portents: for the first time in history the Par- 
liament refused to obey the royal " Je veux " (I wish 
it.) They were exiled for a month, — August to 
September, 1787, — and returned upon conditions. 

In the spring of 1788, Lomdnie's great scheme 
of dismissing the parliaments altogether, and sub- 



166 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

stituting a more subservient " Plenary Court " was 
detected before it was ripe, and denounced to the 
Parliament of Paris, which body, upon remonstrat- 
ing, was again exiled (May), An attempt thereafter 
to raise supplies by royal edict simply, led to the 
rebellion of all the provincial parliaments, the public 
expressing its approval more noisily than ever. On 
August 8 appeared a royal edict to the effect that 
the States-General should be convoked for May 
following; it was followed by another edict, that 
treasury payments should thenceforth be made 
three-fifths in cash and two-fifths in paper, — a 
virtual confession that the treasury was insolvent. 
Thereupon Lome'nie was incontinently dismissed, 
and Necker recalled from Switzerland to become 
the "Savior of France." 

A second convocation of the "Notables" (No- 
vember 6 to December 12, 1788) undertook to decide 
how the States should be held : whether the three 
estates should meet as one deliberative body, or as 
three, or two; and, most important of all, what 
should be the relative force, in voting, of the Third 
Estate, or Commonalty. They separated without 
settling any of the points in question. 

In January, 1789, the elections began, — the real 
beginning of the French Eevolution in the opinion 
of Carlyle, and indeed, of most writers. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 167 

On the 13th of July, 1788, there had been a 
most destructive hail-storm throughout France, and 
the growing crops were literally destroyed ; where- 
by the extreme destitution which had come to be 
the natural condition of the lower classes had been 
accentuated. In addition, the winter of 1788-89 
was one of extreme rigor, so that it seemed almost 
as if God himself were openly manifesting his will 
that the general overturn should come. 

The riot in which Keveillon, the paper manufac- 
turer, was concerned occurred in April, 1789, just 
prior to the assembling of the States-General on 
May 4. 

The clergy and nobility at once exhibited their 
purpose to act as separate bodies; and the Third 
Estate, led by Mirabeau and others, decided that it 
must be the mainspring of the whole, and that it 
would remain "inert" until the other two estates 
should join with it; under which circumstances it 
could outvote them and do what it chose. For 
seven weeks this state of " inertia " endured, until 
the court decided to intervene and the assembly 
hall was found closed against the representatives of 
the people on June 20. Thereupon they met in 
the old tennis-court (Jeu de Paume), and there the 
celebrated " Oath of the Tennis-Court" was taken by 
every man of them but one, — an oath " that they 



168 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

will not separate for man below, but will meet in all 
places, under all circumstances, wheresoever two or 
three can get together, till they have made the 
Constitution." 

One subsequent attempt was made by the king 
to intimidate this ominously persistent body; but 
the messenger whom he despatched to command 
them to separate (" Mercury " de Bre'ze', Carlyle calls 
him) was addressed in very plain language by the 
lion-headed Mirabeau, and retired in confusion. The 
court recoiled before the spectacle of " all France on 
the edge of blazing out ; " the other two estates joined 
the Third, which triumphed in every particular. 
Henceforth the States-General are the " National As- 
sembly," sometimes called the " Constituent Assem- 
bly," or assembly met to make the constitution. 

This cursory sketch of the leading events of the 
early years of the reign of Louis XVI. is offered as 
a sort of supplement to that presented by Dumas 
before he takes his readers into the "thick of the 
business" in Paris. 

The badly veiled military preparations to which 
the terror of the queen and the court led the king 
to consent, kept the Parisian populace in a constant 
state of fermentation, which was powerfully helped 
on by the continued scarcity of food and the con- 
sequent influx of starving provincials into the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 169 

metropolis. The Gardes Franchises gave indubi- 
table symptoms of popular leanings, which perhaps 
emboldened the effervescent spirits of the mob more 
than a little. 

The news of the dismissal of Necker, circulated 
on Sunday, July 12, kindled the first panic terror 
of Paris into a wild frenzy, and resulted in the 
siege of the Bastille, " perhaps the most momentous 
known to history." 

The course of events immediately preceding the 
descent upon that " stronghold of tyranny, called 
Bastille, or 'building,' as if there were no other 
building," as well as those of the siege itself, is 
traced with marvellous fidelity by Dumas, due 
allowance being made, of course, for the necessities 
of the romance. He closely follows Michelet ; but 
the details are told, with substantial unanimity, by 
all historians of the fateful event. 

The part assigned to Billot in the narrative 
before us was in reality played by several persons. 
It was Thuriot, an elector from the Hotel de Yille, 
who gained admission to the fortress and investi- 
gated its condition ; who ascended with De Launay 
to the battlements and showed himself to the mob 
to quiet their fears that he had been foully dealt 
with. This same Thuriot, as president of the con- 
vention, refused to allow Eobespierre to speak in 



170 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

his own defence on the 10th Thermidcr, year II. 
(July 28, 1794). It was Louis Tournay, a black- 
smith and old soldier of the Eegiment Dauphin e\ 
who hacked away the chain which upheld the first 
drawbridge. It was an unknown man who first 
essayed to cross the ditch to take the note dictating 
terms and fell to the bottom (and was killed) ; but 
it was Stanislas Maillard who followed and made 
the passage in safety. 

Elie and Hullin, it is needless to say, are his- 
torical characters, and worthy of an honorable place 
in history for their heroic attempts, then and after- 
wards, to prevent the needless shedding of blood. 

The extraordinary thing about the attack on the 
Bastille is the startling unanimity of the people 
that it was the first and fittest object of attack. It 
seems the more extraordinary because, as Michelet 
has said, it " was by no means reasonable ; " for the 
lower orders had suffered but little from imprison- 
ment in the Bastille. 

" Nobody proposed, but all believed and all 
acted. Along the streets, the quays, the bridges, 
and the boulevards, the crowd shouted to the crowd : 
' To the Bastille ! The Bastille ! ' And the tolling 
of the tocsin sounded in every ear : h la Bastille ! 

" Nobody, I repeat, gave the impulse. The ora- 
tors of the Palais Koyal passed the time in drawing 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 171 

up a list of proscriptions, in condemning the queen 
to death, as well as Madame de Polignac, Artois, 
Flesselles, the provost, and others. The names of 
the conquerors of the Bastille do not include one 
of these makers of motions." 

Perhaps we may accept, in the absence of a 
better, Michelet's explanation of this instinctive 
action of the mob, as having been caused by the 
recent publicity given to the experience of one 
Latude, who was first confined in the Bastille dur- 
ing the reign of Madame de Pompadour, and had 
since " worn out all their prisons," and had finally 
reached the " dunghills of Bicetre," by way of Vin- 
cennes and Charenton. He was at last released 
through the pertinacious efforts of one Madame 
Legros, a poor mercer, who became interested in 
him by chance, and persevered for three years, 
meeting with obstacles of every sort and exposed 
to the vilest calumny, until success came at last, 
and Latude was released in 1784, after more than 
forty years of confinement. His release was fol- 
lowed by an ordinance enjoining intendants never 
again to incarcerate anybody at the request of 
families without a well-grounded reason, and in 
every case to indicate the duration of confinement, 
— a decidedly naive confession of the degree of 
arbitrariness which had been reached. 



172 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

" From that day " (of Latude's deliverance), says 
Michelet, " the people of the town and the faubourg, 
who, in that much-frequented quarter, were ever 
passing and repassing in its shadow, never failed to 
curse it." 

It is proper to observe that the state of things 
which existed in the Bastille when the Cellamare 
conspirators underwent mock imprisonment there 
(witness the Eegency Eomances) had been done 
away with. While other prisons had become more 
merciful, this had become more cruel. From reign 
to reign the privileges were taken away, the win- 
dows were walled up one after another, and new 
bars were added. The other encroachments by De 
Launay upon the "liberties of the Bastille" are 
described by Dumas in the course of the narrative. 

To quote Michelet once more : " The Bastille 
was known and detested by the whole world. 
'Bastille' and 'tyranny' were in every language 
synonymous terms. Every nation, at the news 
of its destruction, believed it had recovered its 
liberty." 

The Comte de Se'gur, then ambassador at Kussia, 
relates that when the news arrived in St. Peters- 
burg, men of every nation were to be seen shouting 
and weeping in the streets, and repeating, as they 
embraced one another : " Who can help weeping for 
joy ? The Bastille is taken ! " 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 173 

The Due de Liancourt announced the fall of 
the fortress to Louis XYI. "Why," said the king, 
" it is downright revolt ! " " It 's more than that," 
replied Liancourt, " it is revolution." 

Nothing need be added to the description given 
by Dumas of the painful excitement at Versailles, 
or of the king's journey to Paris and experience 
there. The scenes attending the summary ven- 
geance wreaked upon Foulon and Berthier, who 
were the very incarnation of the old regime, are 
also portrayed with the careful attention to detail 
which is so striking a characteristic of the historical 
portions of the author's romances ; and the same 
may be said of the assassination of Flesselles, and, 
by anticipation, of the events of the 5th of October 
in the streets of Paris and at the Hotel de Yille, 
when Stanislas Maillard assumed the leadership of 
the women (" the Menadic hosts "), and Lafayette 
was reluctantly compelled to lead the march of 
the thirty thousand upon Versailles. 

The fall of the Bastille was followed throughout 
France by the enlistment of National Guards, osten- 
sibly, in most instances, as a protection against 
mythical brigands, whose coming in great numbers 
was continually heralded in every town and village, 
but who never came. The experience of Pitou, in 
Haramont, is typical of the great movement which 
was in progress everywhere. 



174 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

" It is a terrible but certain fact," says Michelet, 
"that in Paris, that city of eight hundred thousand 
souls, there was no public authority for the space 
of three months, from July to October." 

Meanwhile the National Assembly was going 
haltingly on with its work of constitution-making. 
The session of the 4th of August shines out with 
peculiar prominence, as it was the occasion of all 
the privileged classes vying with one another in 
renouncing their privileges. Such good effect as 
this tardy renunciation might have had, however, 
was destroyed by the king's refusal to sanction it, 
except in so far as he was personally affected. 

Towards the end of August the knotty question 
of the veto was duly reached: whether the king 
should have any veto upon the acts of the Assem- 
bly, and if so, whether it should be absolute or 
suspensive. 

Throughout Lafayette assumed a position of great 
prominence in other directions than as commander- 
in-chief of the National Guard. The " suspensive " 
veto was finally decided upon, and there was a 
vague prospect of a return of quieter times, except 
for the continued scarcity and dearness of grain. 
" Our rights of man are voted," says Carlyle ; " feu- 
dalism and all tyranny abolished; yet behold we 
stand in queue [at the bakers' doors] ! Is it aristo- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 175 

crat f orestallers — a court still bent on intrigue ? 
Something is rotten somewhere." 

With hope, terror, suspicion, excitement, succeed- 
ing one another with bewildering rapidity, comes 
the certainty that the " (Eil-de-Boauf is rallying/' 
that the Flanders regiment has been summoned to 
Versailles, and that some scheme of flight or repres- 
sion is in the wind. Then comes the news of the 
banquet of the 1st of October, — of the appearance 
of the king and queen, the trampling under foot of 
cockades, and the announcement of Marie Antoi- 
nette the next day, that she was " enchanted with 
the events of the supper." Of all fatuous perform- 
ances of mortals foredoomed to destroy themselves, 
surely that was the most fatuous. It is significant, 
by the way, of the extreme caution with which the 
statements of Madame Campan must be accepted, 
that in describing this scene, at which she was 
present, she does not mention the word " cockade," 
nor does she imply that it was aught but a quiet, 
orderly function, at which, perhaps, some one or 
two may have imbibed a thought too freely. 

With regard to the events of the night of 
October 5-6 at Versailles, nothing need be said, 
save that the body-guard who heroically defended 
the door to the queen's apartments, where Georges 
de Charny is said to have been slain, was one 



176 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Miomandre de Sainte-Marie ; and that although 
" fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead, he has 
crawled to the (Eil-de-Boeuf, and shall live hon- 
ored of loyal France." 

In the " Comtesse de Charny " we shall find the 
king and queen on the road to Paris, on the 6th of 
October. We shall there meet many old acquaint- 
ances and make some new ones, and shall follow 
the setting sun of the time-honored monarchy of 
France till it sinks at last below the horizon. 



ANGE PITOU. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1789. 



j the King's brothers. 



Louis XVI. , King of Trance. 

Marie Antoinette. 

Comte d'Artois, 

Comte de Provence, 

Princesse de Lamballe. 

The Dauphin. 

Madame Boyale. 

Louis Philippe Joseph, Due d'Orleans, afterwards Philippe 

Iilgalite. 
M. de Calonne, Comptroller-General. 
M. de Crosme, Lieutenant of police. 
Comte de Launay, Governor of the Bastile. 
Comtesse Jules de Polignac, favorite of the Queen. 
Diane, Duchesse de Polignac, her sister-in-law. 
Madame Campan, waiting-woman to the Queen. 
Madame de Tourzel, governess of the royal children. 
Marquis de Lafayette, Commander-in-Chief of the National 

Guards of Trance, 
Baron de Necker. 
Madame de Stael, his daughter. 

M. TURGOT. 

Madame Hague, ) „ j. .-, ^ 

m J attending on the Queen. 

Madame Thibault, ) 

Comte Olivier de Charny, Lieutenant of the Queen's Guards. 

Andree de Taverney, Comtesse de Charny. 



178 



LIST OF CHAKACTEKS. 



brothers of Comte de Charny. 



gentlemen of the King's household. 



officers commanding the Royal 
Troops. 



Baron George de Charny, 
vlcomte isidor de charny, 
Prince de Beauvau, 

M. DE YlLLEROY, 

M. de Nesle, 

M. DE VlLLEQUIER, 

Prince de Conde, 
Prince de Lambesq, 
Marechal de Broglie, 
comte d'estaing, 
M. de Dreux Breze, 
Baron de Besenval, 
M. de Narbonne Pritztar, 
M. de Salkenaym, 
M. de Biron, 

M. DE LUSIGNAN, 

M. de Perse val, aide-de-camp of Comte d'Estaing. 

M. de Clermont-Tonnere, "\ 

M. de Sartine, 

Marie de Laval, 

Madame de Magneville, 

M. de Coigny, 

Baron de Breteuil, 

m. de la rochefoucault, 

COMTE DE MaUREPAS, 

Comte de Machatjt, 
M. de Brienne, 
M. de Varicourt, 
Chevalier d'Abzac, Chief of the Royal Stable. 
Count Cagliostro. 
Dr. Honore Gilbert. 
Sebastien Gilbert, his son. 
Abbe Portier, a schoolmaster. 

Louis Ange Pitou, one of his pupils, afterwards Commander 
of the National Guard of Haramont. 



friends of Marie Antoinette. 



of the Prench Court. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



179 



Rose Angelique Pitou, Pitou's aunt. 

Billot, a farmer of Villers-Cotteret, afterwards leading the 

attack on the Bastille. 
Catherine, his daughter. 
Madame Billot. 

Camille Desmoulins, ^ 

Jean Paul Marat, 
Stanislaus Maillard, an usher of 

the Chatelet Court, r Revolutionists. 

Madeleine Chambry, a flower-girl, 
Verriere, a deformed dwarf, 
Danton, 
Elie, formerly an officer in the Queen's " 

regiment, taking part in the 

Hullin, a chasseur, V attack on the 

Gonchon, the " Mirabeau of the People," Bastille. 

Arne, Challot, and de Lepine, soldiers, > 
Gabriel Honore Mirabeau 



members of the National 
Assembly. 



M, de S IE YES, 

M. Guillotin, M.D., 

M. Monnier, 

M. de Flesselles, Provost of the Merchants of Paris. 

M. de Bailly, his successor. 

M. de Saint-Priest, minister for Paris. 

M. de Eoulon. 

M. Berthier de Sauvigny, his son-in-law. 

Saint-Jean, Foulon's servant. 

M. Rappe, syndic. 

M. Delayigne, President of the Electors. 

M. Riviere, an Elector. 

M. Acloque, President of the St. Marcel District. 

Abbe Lefevre d'Ormesson. 

Abbe Delille. 

Abbe Maury. 

Abbe Beradier, Principal of the College of Louis-le-Grand. 



180 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Doctor Mesmer. 

M. de Losme, Major of the Bastille. 

Reveillon, a paper-manufacturer. 

Master Farollet, tennis-master-in-chief to Dae d'Orleans. 

Pasdeloup, a police ageut. 

Captain Goudran, of the National Guard. 

Sergeant Rigold. 

M. Cornu, a hatter. 

M. Dulauroy, a tailor. 

Father Clovis, a hermit. 

M. Furth, a pamphleteer. 

Father Lefranc, a farmer. 

M. Lonfre, Mayor of Haramont. 

Claude Tellier, a woodcutter, Pitou's lieutenant. 

Desire Maniquet, a poaclier, Sergeant of Pitou's Company. 

Bastien Godinet, one of Pitou's soldiers. 

Labrie, a lackey of M. de Flesselles. 

Barnaut, a stable-boy on Billot's farm. 

Guyon, a turnkey in the Bastille. 

Jean Bechade, 

Bernard Laroche, 

Jean La.caurege, 

Antoine Pujade, 

M. de White, 

comte de solage, 

Tavernier, 



prisoners in the Bastille rescued by the 
people. 



LA COMTESSE DE CHARNY, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

" Be it understood that we are writing history, and 
not romance/' says the author more than once in 
the course of these volumes. The statement is 
incontestable in the sense that the strictly roman- 
tic portions of the story — those which deal with 
fictitious personages and events — furnish but a 
trifling part of the interest. But, on the other 
hand, it must be said that he who writes of " the 
thing we call French Revolution " as it was, who 
takes its leading figures for his heroes, and de- 
scribes its lurid scenes and incidents, ranging from 
almost incredible grandeur to quite incredible in- 
famy and horror, — such a one, we say, could 
hardly fail, were he the least interesting of writ- 
ers, to produce a work beside which the most 
intense creation of the brain of the novelist sinks 
into insignificance. 

In " Ange Pitou " the historical thread is broken 
at the invasion of the (Eil-de-Boeuf by the Pari- 
sian populace on the night of the Fifth and Sixth 



182 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

of October, and the fortunate, as well as courageous 
and tactful, interposition of Lafayette. In the 
"Comtesse de Charny" the narrative is resumed 
with the forced journey of the royal family from 
Versailles to Paris on the Sixth of October, and is 
continued, with substantial accuracy as to all the 
main events and innumerable minor ones, down to 
the Twenty-first of January, 1793, when Louis XVL, 
the well-meaning but fatally weak monarch, whom 
Carlyle calls the " unhappiest of Human Solecisms," 
paid the penalty of his own weakness and inde- 
cision, and the crimes and oppression of his 
ancestors. 

Any attempt to sketch roughly these momentous 
years within the reasonable and proper limits of a 
note of this sort would necessarily result in some- 
thing very like an abstract of the work to which it 
is introductory. 

The most striking thing about this tremendous 
upheaval which shook the whole world, whether 
we read of it as told by Dumas in the various 
romances of the Marie Antoinette cycle, or in the 
numerous strictly historical works devoted to the 
subject, is the utter fatuity with which the king 
and queen — or, perhaps, the king under the in- 
fluence of the queen — persistently misused, or 
refused to use at all, the opportunities that were 
afforded, in the first place to guide the ^Revolution, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 183 

and, in the second place, when it had become too 
late for that, to escape by flight the consequences of 
their own folly. 

It is a most significant fact, and one which 
explains much that would otherwise remain inex- 
plicable, that previous to the flight to Varennes the 
French people had in but very few instances ceased 
to be monarchist at heart, and could very easily 
have been won back to the loyal support of Louis, 
had he chosen to adopt and consistently follow such 
a course of action as was promised, for instance, by 
his visit to the Assembly on the 4th of February, 
1790, when that body was wandering in the mazes 
of constitution-making (whence its name "Consti- 
tuent "), — had he chosen, that is to say, to accept in 
good faith the limited functions of kingship which 
that instrument allotted to him, and to be himself 
the leader of a peaceful revolution. 

Towards the close of 1790, while disorganization 
and anarchy were making rapid progress, Mirabeau, 
"desperate of constitution-building under such ac- 
companiments," entered into those negotiations with 
the court which are described with much fulness 
and practical accuracy by Dumas, accompanied by 
a marvellously truthful portrayal of him who was, 
beyond question, the grandest man, in everything but 
morals, of the whole revolutionary period. What 
might have been the result had he been dealt with 



184 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

honestly and with sincerity, it is perhaps useless to 
conjecture. Whether or not his ambition to save 
the monarchy was the offspring of his ambition to 
occupy the same position with respect to the queen 
that Mazarin is supposed to have occupied with re- 
spect to Anne of Austria, is of small consequence. 
It is certain that he was tricked and fooled and 
played with, merely to gain time, while the hope of 
foreign interference was growing in the queen's 
breast ; and it is equally certain that with his death, 
on the 2d of April, 1791, the last chance of guiding 
or controlling the Eevolution passed away. 

And so was it with Lameth, and so, too, with 
Barnave, whose devotion seems to have made some 
impression upon Marie Antoinette, but whose only 
reward for his sincere purpose to serve her was pre- 
mature death. 

When Gamain, — of whom we believe no writer, 
whatever his predilections concerning the Eevolution, 
has ever written except in terms of disgust and 
loathing, — when Gamain turned upon his bene- 
factor, and disclosed the existence of the secret 
cupboard, the correspondence of both Barnave and 
Mirabeau came to light, and the evidence of their 
" treason " was overwhelming. Poor Barnave was 
then in prison as a " suspect " at Grenoble. He was 
brought to Paris, and guillotined in due course. 

The greater statesman was beyond the reach 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 185 

of the guillotine, but his remains reposed in the 
Pantheon, and his bust was a prominent object in 
the Hall of the Jacobins. The latter, denounced by 
Eobespierre from the tribune, was cast upon the 
floor and shattered. But the crowning dishonor 
was reserved for a later period. 

" It was on a dull day in autumn, in the tragical 
year 1794, when France had almost finished ex- 
terminating herself, — it was then that, having 
destroyed the living, she set about destroying the 
dead, and banished her most glorious son from her 
heart, performing this last grievous act with savage 

joy." 

Thus Michelet, who, however, defends the action 
of the Convention, in pursuance of whose decree 
the remains of Mirabeau were removed from the 
Pantheon, and transported to Clamart, the burial- 
place for executed criminals, in the Faubourg Saint 
Marceau. 

It may be worth while to note that the functions 
of friend and physician to Mirabeau, here assigned 
to Gilbert, were really performed by Cabanis, who 
published an account of his illustrious patient's last 
illness and death. From this contemporary source 
Dumas has drawn largely. 

It is very difficult, after making all possible al- 
lowance for every consideration which could be 
humanly expected to weigh with the most exalted 



186 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

personages, to explain the conduct of the king and 
queen in connection with their attempt to join 
Bouille" and his army at Montmddy. They still 
believed, if the king may be said to have had any 
belief, that the Eevolution might still be con- 
trolled from outside, and therefore resolved at last 
upon taking the step which had been urged many 
times by their sincere friends when secrecy would 
have been unnecessary. But at this time — June, 
1791 — they were substantially prisoners in the 
Tuileries, as they had learned when they made the 
attempt to go to Saint Cloud in April. 

Under those conditions, what steps did they take 
to insure secrecy, and to slip away unrecognized 
and unnoticed ? Let us listen to Michelet on this 
subject : — 

"This journey to Varennes was a miracle of 
imprudence. It is sufficient to make a statement 
of what common-sense required, and then to follow 
an opposite course ; by adopting this method, if all 
memoirs were to vanish, the story might still be 
written. 

" First of all, the queen orders an outfit to be 
made for herself and her children two or three 
months beforehand, as if to give notice of her 
departure. Next, she bespeaks a magnificent trav- 
elling-case, like the one she had already, — a com- 
plicated piece of furniture that contained all that 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 187 

could have been desired for a voyage around the 
globe. Then, again, instead of taking an ordinary 
carriage of modest appearance, she charges Fersen 
to have a huge, capacious berlin constructed, on 
which might be fitted and piled a heap of trunks, 
boxes, portmanteaus, and whatever else causes 
a coach to be particularly conspicuous on the road. 
This is not all; this coach was to be followed by 
another full of female attendants ; whilst before and 
behind, three body-guards were to gallop as couriers 
in their new bright-yellow jackets, calculated to 
attract attention, and make people believe, at the 
very least, that they were retainers of the Prince 
de Conde', the head and front of the emigration ! 
Doubtless these men are familiar with the route ? 
No, they had never travelled it before ! But they 
must be resolute fellows, armed to the teeth ? 
They had nothing but small hunting-knives ! The 
king informed them that they would find arms in 
the carriage ; but Fersen, the queen's man, doubt- 
less fearing on her account the danger of armed 
resistance, had forgotten the weapons ! 

"All this is ridiculous want of foresight. But 
now let us glance at the wretched, ignoble side of 
the picture. The king allows himself to be dressed 
as a valet, and disguises himself in a gray coat 
and a little wig. He is now Durand, the valet-de- 
chambre. These humiliating particulars are in the 



188 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

simple narrative of the Duchesse d'Angouleme 
(Madame Koyale); the fact is also stated in the 
passport given to the queen and Madame de 
Tourzel, as a Kussian lady, the Baroness de Korff. 
Thus this lady is so intimate with her valet-de- 
chambre (an indecorous arrangement, which alone 
revealed everything) that she places him in her 
carriage face to face, and knee to knee ! " 

And again: "A very resolute soldier, recom- 
mended by M. de Bouille', was to have entered the 
carriage, to give answers when required, and to 
conduct the whole affair. But Madame de Tourzel, 
the governess of the royal children, insisted upon 
the privilege of her office. By virtue of the oath 
she had taken, it was her duty, her right, not to 
quit the children ; and the word ' oath ' made a 
great impression on Louis XVI. Moreover, it was 
a thing unheard of in the annals of etiquette for 
the Children of France to travel without a gover- 
ness. Therefore the governess took her seat in the 
carriage, and not the soldier; and instead of a 
useful man, they had a useless woman. The expe- 
dition had no leader, nobody to direct it ; it was 
left to go alone and at random." 

In the face of these and many other similar and 
indubitable facts, it is not hard to believe the anec- 
dote of the queen's childish exploit when she en- 
countered Lafayette in the Place du Carrousel. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 189 

In the details of the flight, Dumas follows 
Michelet very closely, assigning to the Charnys 
and to Billot parts which were actually played — 
in many instances — by unknown persons. 

For example, it was not Billot, but " a scarecrow 
of an herb-merchant " who noticed the grand new 
berlin in the wood of Bondy, and furnished the 
needed information as to the road the fugitives had 
taken. So Drouet, when he rode out of Sainte 
Menehould, was " watched and closely followed by 
a horseman who understood his intention, and 
would, perhaps, have killed him ; but he galloped 
across the country and plunged into the woods, 
where it was impossible to overtake him." And 
Bomceuf arrived at Yarennes from Paris, accom- 
panied by " an officer of the National Guard, — a 
man of gloomy countenance, evidently fatigued, but 
agitated and excited, wearing plain, unpowdered 
hair, and a shirt open at the neck." 

It was Count Fersen, a Swede, who drove the 
berlin to Bondy. He seems to have been influenced 
solely by attachment to the queen. He disappears 
from history from the time he left the coach at 
Bondy. 

The three body-guards who accompanied the 
flight were Valory, Maiden, and Du Moustier. 
They were gagged, and bound upon the seat of 
the carriage on the return to Paris. 



190 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Madame Campan, the queen's femme-de-chamhre, 
is authority for many details given by Dumas, — 
as, for instance, the secrecy observed by Marie 
Antoinette in her interviews with Barnave, and as 
to the precautions adopted with respect to food, 
having their source in the return to the Tuileries 
of the Palais-Eoyal pastry-cook, who was such a 
furious Jacobin. 

Madame Campan also testifies to the enormous 
appetite of the king, and to the queen's mortifica- 
tion because it never abated ; nor did he put any 
restraint upon it, no matter how painful or humili- 
ating were his circumstances. 

The League of Pilnitz, in August, 1791, made the 
king's eventual deposition inevitable, although it 
was postponed for a year. The manifesto issued 
by the parties to the league aroused furious indig- 
nation in France. The flames which it kindled 
were not extinguished till twenty-five years later. 

In September, the Constituent Assembly, having 
previously, upon Eobespierre's motion, declared its 
members ineligible for the succeeding Assembly, de- 
clared its sessions to be ended, and went its way. 

On October 1, the Legislative Assembly, the first 
and last body elected under the Constitution, began 
its life of a year. 

Its time was wasted in " debates, futilities, and 
staggering parliamentary procedure," amid frequent 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 191 

changes of ministry, growing anxiety concerning 
foreign invasion, and such, internal episodes as that 
of Avignon, where the reprisals for the death of 
L'Escuyer, under the lead of Jourdan Coupe-Tete, 
were immeasurably worse than is here hinted at. 
The Tour de la G-laciere was the theatre of scenes 
at the mere thought of which the heart sickens. 

In those chapters of the " Comtesse de Charny " 
which deal with the ministry of Dumouriez, and 
the events accompanying and succeeding it, we 
have some welcome glimpses of "that queen-like 
burgher-woman, beautiful Amazonian — graceful to 
the eye ; more so to the mind," — the daughter of 
Phlipon, the Paris engraver, and wife of Eoland de 
la Platriere. " The creature of sincerity and nature " 
— so she has been described — " in an age of arti- 
ficiality, pollution, and cant ; there, in her still 
completeness, in her. still invincibility, she, if thou 
knew it, is the noblest of all living Frenchwomen." 

In due time the Girondist deputies, to the num- 
ber of some twenty or more, succumbed to the 
Mountain, and ascended the fatal platform, from 
which they might have saved Louis XVL, had they 
had the courage to vote in accordance with their 
acknowledged convictions. 

On the 8th of November, 1793, a month after the 
death of the queen, and within a day or two of the 
last appearance upon earth of Madame Du Barry, 



192 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

who has been called the "gateway of the Kevolu- 
tion," and the infamous Philippe figalitd, Madame 
Eoland followed her associates to the Place de la 
KeVolution. 

Her memoirs were written during the five months 
she was in prison. 

Events marched fast during the early summer 
of 1792, following the declaration of war against 
Austria in April. The Clubs, journalistic organiza- 
tions, and Sections were growing ever more violent 
and desperate, and on June 20th came the immense 
procession, which eventually invaded the Tuileries, 
— an occasion more remarkable for what it fore- 
boded than for what actually happened. 

Lafayette's unexpected appearance in the As- 
sembly a week later put the finishing touch to the 
extinction of his popularity and influence upon 
events. 

The scene in the Assembly on July 6th, deri- 
sively called the " Baiser l'amourette," was followed 
by Barbaroux's famous despatch to Eebecqui for 
" five hundred men who know how to die." 

The solemn proclamation of the " Country in 
Danger " on July 2 2d, the Prussian declaration of 
war on the 24th, and the celebrated, but ill-advised, 
manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick carried the 
excitement and indignation of France to the boiling 
point. The arrival at Paris of the black-browed 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 193 

Marseillais, after "wending their wild way from 
the extremity of French land, through unknown 
cities, toward unknown destiny, with a purpose 
that they know," inspired to frenzy by the soul- 
stirring strains of the "Marseillaise," the "luckiest 
musical composition ever promulgated," — their arri- 
val at Paris, we say, in the last days of July, fur- 
nished the only ingredient that was lacking to 
make the seething mass of the population effer- 
vesce, and the Tenth of August was the inevitable 
sequel. 

Of all the participants in the events of that 
dreadful day, the interest of humanity must ever 
attach most compassionately to the devoted Swiss. 
The ten score or more of courtiers who had rushed 
to the Tuileries to defend monarchy in its last 
ditch succeeded in escaping in large numbers when 
they found themselves shamelessly deserted by 
those for whom they had come to lay down their 
lives. Some there were who remained and faced 
certain death heroically ; but they were Frenchmen 
dying for what they thought a consecrated cause. 
How different was it with the Swiss ! They were 
mere " hirelings," as they had been often sneeringly 
called; by birth and education, their sympathies 
were on the popular side ; they had no interest in 
maintaining their position, except to obey the order 
of him to whom they had sold their services, and 



194 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

by him they had been heartlessly abandoned. They 
knew not how to act: "one duty only is clear to 
them, that of standing by their post ; and they will 
perform that." 

Westermann pleaded with them in German, and 
the Marseillais implored them " in hot Provencal 
speech and pantomime." Let them stand aside, and 
their lives were saved. They stood fast, and what 
followed is known of all men. 

The consequences of the Tenth of August were 
not slow to follow, as the Assembly in the presence 
of the king voted that the " Hereditary Eepresenta- 
tive" (which was the constitutional title of the 
king) be suspended. It also voted that a National 
Convention be summoned, by election, to provide 
for the future. 

Meanwhile, and until that Convention assembled, 
although the Legislature continued to sit, the In- 
surrectionary Commune, self-constituted, was really 
supreme at Paris, and Danton held the seals of the 
Department of Justice. 

The removal of the royal family to the Temple, 
and their life there, are told by Dumas in much 
detail and with complete fidelity to history, which 
necessarily relies for many of its facts upon the 
narratives of the valets-de-chambre. 

We need add nothing either to what our author 
has to say with relation to the " Massacres of Sep- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 195 

tember " at La Force and the other prisons, except 
that the massacred amounted to one thousand and 
eighty-nine, all told, and that Robespierre " nearly 
wept " at the thought that one innocent person was 
slain ! It is said that the bell of Saint-G-ermain 
l'Auxerrois, on which the tocsin was sounded for the 
massacres to begin, was the identical metal on which 
the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew, two 
hundred and twenty years before. 

Twenty-three theatres were open while the 
slaughter was in progress ! 

Both Sombreuil and Cazotte were spared, at the 
intercession of their daughters, but both subse- 
quently came to the guillotine during the " Terror.'* 

Maillard's appearance as presiding officer of the 
tribunal at La Force was his last in history. 

The most important incidents of the famous sit- 
ting of the Convention at which the death of Louis 
was decreed, mainly through the weakness of 
Yergniaud and his fellow Girondists, are described 
by Dumas in accordance with all the authorities, 
and the same may be said of his description of the 
king's last hours and execution. 

The author's frequent eulogistic references to 
Michelet, whom, as we have said, he follows closely 
in many portions of the narrative, make it proper 
to say that the impartiality of that writer is by no 
means beyond question. In a note to one of the 



196 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

earlier romances of this series, we have adverted to 
the charge he has brought against Louis XV. 
apparently without authority, and that charge is 
echoed by Dumas in these volumes almost every 
time that Comte Louis de Narbonne is mentioned. 

It is natural that so earnest a partisan of the 
Eevolution should be influenced by bitter feelings 
towards England for the part she played under the 
leadership of Pitt and Burke. But it can hardly be 
claimed that he is justified in characterizing Burke 
as " a talented, but passionate and venal Irishman," 
who " was paid by his adversary, Mr. Pitt," for " a 
furious philippic against the Eevolution;" or in 
speaking of that statesman's work as " an infamous 
book, wild with rage, full of calumny, scurrilous 
abuse, and insulting buffoonery ; " or, again, in re- 
ferring to him as a man "possessed of brilliant 
eloquence, but devoid of ideas and of frivolous 
character," — a man " who makes the better actor 
because he acts his part in earnest, and because his 
interior emptiness enables him the better to adopt 
and urge the ideas of others ; " or in making the 
statement that "England never had, nor will she 
ever have, any great moralist or jurisconsult." 

Olivier de Charny is a most perfect type of 
many noble-hearted Frenchmen who sacrificed their 
lives without a murmur in behalf of what they 
believed to be a holy cause, convinced though they 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 197 

were of trie comparative unworthiness of those who 
stood for that cause. It was fitting that Andre'e, 
whose only happiness in life had come to her 
through him, and whose hopes of happiness died 
with him, should have turned aside from the 
thought of life without him. 

In view of the terrible months that followed the 
death of the king, happy were they who, like Gil- 
bert and Billot, turned their backs upon their coun- 
try, and sought true freedom under the flag of the 
new Eepublic across the sea. 

In the last volume of the series, "Chevalier de 
Maison Eouge," the author has taken for his theme 
the agony of Marie Antoinette during the eight 
months that intervened between the king's death 
and her own. We shall there make the acquaint- 
ance of one whose devotion was to the person of 
the queen even more than to the dying cause which 
she represented. 



LA COMTESSE DE CHARNY, 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Period, 1789-1794. 

Louis XVI., King of Trance. 
Marie Antoinette. 

Madam^RoyIlk, j «»e royal children. 

Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister. 

Comte de Provence, ) ■ 

Comie d'Abtois, j brothers of the Km S- 

Princesse de Lamballe, Superintendent of the royal household. 

M. de Penthievre, her father-in-law. 

Madame de Tourzel, governess of the royal children. 

Madame Misery, "| 

Madame Campan, V the Queen's waiting-women. 

Madame Neuville, J 

Weber, confidential servant to Marie Antoinette. 

Doctor Louis, Marie Antoinette's physician. 

Madame Brunier, the Dauphin's chambermaid. 

M. de Breze, Master of Ceremonies. 

La Chapelle, the King's steward. 

MM. Hue, Darey, and Thierry, attendants of the King. 



Prince de Poix, 

M. de Saint-Pardon, 

Baron d'Aubier, 

MM. de Goguelat and de Chamille, 

Clery, the King's valet at the Temple. 

M. Leonard, the Queen's hairdresser. 



gentlemen of the 

. King's household after 

the 10th of August. 



200 



LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 



ROYALISTS. 



PRINCE DE CONDE. 
DUC DE LlAN COURT. 
DUC DE LA ROCHEPOUCAULT. 
COMTE DE LA MaRCK. 
COMTESSE DE LA MaRCK. 

Comte Louis de Narbonne. 

COMTE FeRSEN. 

Baroness de Stael. 
Prince de Lambesq. 



Marquis de Favras. 
Baron de Breteuil. 
Due de Mailly. 
Marechal de Mouchy. 
Marechal de Noailles. 
Due de Castries. 
Comte d'Innisdal. 
Due Charles de Lorraine 
Abbe Sicard. 



MM. Viomesnil, de la Chatre, Lecrosne, Gosse, Yilliers, 

and Bridaud. 
M. de Dampierre, Chevalier of the Order of Saint Louis. 
Pierre Victor Besenval, Inspector-General of Swiss. 
M. Laporte, Superintendent of the Civil List. 
M. de Yilleroy, of the King's household. 
M. Pastoret, a member of the Legislative Assembly. 
M. de Brissac, Commander of the King's Constitutional Guard. 
M. de Sombreuil, Governor of Hotel des Invalides. 
Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, his daughter. 
M. Acloque, a Commander of the National Guard. 
MM. de Carteja, Clermont, d'Amboise, Tourcaty, d'Amblay, 
Marquie, and Merci d'Argenteau. 



Princesse de la Tremouille. 
Madame de Mackau. 
Madame de la Roche Aymon 
Madame Ginestous. 
Princesse de Tarente. 
M. de Malden, 
M. de Valory, 



Baron de Batz. 
Parisot, a journalist. 
Jacques Cazotte. 
Mademoiselle Cazotte, his 
daughter. 

} accompanying the royal family 
in the flight from Paris. 

Comtesse de Charny, the Queen's maid-of-honor. 
Vicomte Isidore de Charny, Comte de Charny's brother. 



LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 201 



killed by the mob of 

August 10th. 



LOYALISTS. 

Abbe Bouyon, a dramatic author, 
M. de Suleatj, a Royalist pamphleteer. 
MM. Vigier and Solhiniac, of the 
old Royal Guard, 

M. DE MoNTJIORIN, \ . 

Abbe de Rastignac, a religious author, L™^ ^^ P " 
Abbe Leneant, an ex-chaplain of the King, J 

Royalist Officers assisting in the Flight of the Royal Family. 

Marquis de Bouille, Governor-General of the City of Metz. 

Coute Louis de Bouille, ) hig SQns> 

M. Jules de Bouille, ) 

Due de Choiseul. Marquis de Dandoins. 

Baron de Mandell. Colonel de Damas. 

Lieutenant Bondet. Captain Deslon. 

Adjutant Eocq. Captain Guntzer. 

Sergeant Saint Charles. Sergeant la Potterie. 



Royalist Officers defending the Tuileries. 

M. d'Hervilly, commanding the Chevaliers of Saint Louis and 

Constitutional Guard. 
General Mandat, a Commander of the National Guard. 
M. Maillardot, commanding the Swiss. 
M. de Chantereine, Colonel of the King's Constitutional 

Guard. 
Chevalier Charles d'Autichamp. 
Salis Lizers, Major Reading, and Captain Durler, Swiss 

officers. 
MM. Rulhieres, Yerdiere, de la Chesnaye, and Eorestier 

de Saint-Venant. 



202 LIST OF CHAKACTERS. 



REVOLUTIONISTS. 



Jean Paul Marat, editor of " L'Ami du Peuple." 
Maximilien de Robespierre, an advocate of Arras, member 

of the National Assembly and of the National Convention, 
Danton, Minister of Justice and Member of the National 

Convention. 
Louis Philippe Joseph, Due d'Orleans, afterwards called 

Philippe Ii]galite\ 
Rouget de L'Isle, an engineering officer of Strasburg, author 

of "La Marseillaise." 
Santerre, a brewer, General-in-Chief of a Battalion of the 

National Guard. 
Gonchon, " the Mirabeau of the People." 
Fouquier Tinville, Attorney-General of the Revolutionary 

Tribunal. 
Antoine Saint Just, 
blllaud de yarennes, 
Herault de Sechelles, 
Collet d'Herbois, 
Legendre, a butcher, 
Anacharsis Clootz, 
Thuriot, called " the king-killer," 
Couthon, a cripple, 
Fabre d'Eglantine, 
Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, 
Bishop Gregoire, 

Maillard, Sheriff of the Court of the Chatelet. 
Theroigne du Mericourt, a courtesan. 
Thomas Paine. Due d'Aiguillon. 

M. Robert. Fournier, an American. 

Westermann, a Prussian. 
Nicholas, a butcher. 
Prosper Verrieres, a deformed dwarf. 
Henriot, the master of the guillotine. 



members of the National 

Convention condemning 

the King. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 203 

RE VOL UTIONISTS. 

Simon, a cobbler, in charge of the Dauphin at the Temple. 

Messieuks Isabet, father and son. 

Madame de Rochereul, a spy at the Tuileries. 

Chabot, one of the authors of the "Catechism for Sans 

Culottes." 
Lacroix, a lawyer, member of the Legislative Assembly. 
Bishop Torne, of the Legislative Assembly. 
Andre Chenier, a poet. 

Bertrand Barrere, member of the National Convention. 
Count d'Oyat, a bastard son of Louis XV. 
Virchaux, a Swiss. Brtjsne, a type-setter. 

Bonjour, a clerk in the Navy Department. 
Madame Candeille, of the Comedie Francaise, actress, poetess, 

musician. 
Nicholas Claude Gamain, master locksmith to the King. 
Matthew Jouve, otherwise known as Jourdan \ . 

the headsman. V ° 

MM. Lescuyer, Duprat, and Mainvielle, j Revollltl0msts - 
Charlot, a barber, ) murderers of Princesse de 

Grison, Rodi, and Mamin, ) Lamballe. 

M. Huguenin, President of the Commune. 
M. Tallien, Secretary of the Commune. 
MM. Manuel and Chaumette, Procureurs of the Commune. 
Luzouski, a Pole, member of the Communal Council. 
Panis, friend of Danton and 

brother-in-law of Santerre, 
MM. Jordeuil and Duplain, 
Sergent, a copper-plate engraver, 
MM. Deforgues, Guermer, Dufort, Lenfant, and Leclerc, 

of the Vigilance Committee. 
Cambon, Guardian of the Public Treasures. 
Mouchet, a crippled dwarf, Justice of the Peace from the 

Marais District. 



of the Communal Council 
and Vigilance Committee. 



204 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



RE VOL UTIONISTS. 

Lubin, a municipal officer proclaiming the Republic. 

Boucher Rene, ^| 

Boucher Saint-Sauveur, J- municipal officials. 

MM. Boirie and Le Roulx, J 

M. Giraud, City Architect of Paris. 

REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISTS. 

Camille Desmoulins, styling himself " Procureur-General de 

la Lanterne." 
Jacques Rene Hebert, editor of Father Duchene. 
Louis Stanislaus Freron, editor of " Le Moniteur." 

LOUSTALOT, It r. -r,/ i • -. -^ • » 

r»™T« T -« -d™,,^™™™ f editors of "Revolutions de Pans. 
Citizen Proudhomme, J 

M. Carra, editor of " Annales Patriotiques." 
Bonneville, editor of " The Iron Mouth." 
Jean Lambert Tallien, editor of " L'Ami des Citoyens." 
Mademoiselle de Keralio, writer for the " Mercury," after- 
wards Madame Robert. 

GIRONDISTS. 

Jeanne Marie Roland de la Platiere. 

Manon Jeanne Phlipon,1iIs wife, usually called Madame Roland. 

Charles Barbaroux, of Marseilles, 

M. Rebecqui, his friend, 

M. Grangeneuve, a Bordeaux advocate, 

Jeanne Pierre Brissot, 

Jerome Petion, 

Rabaut Saint-^tienne, 

GlREY DuPRE, 

Abbe Fauchet, 

mm. louvet, isnard, boyer fonfrede 

Condorcet, Yergniaud, Gensonne, 

GUADET, LANJUINAIS, VaLAZE, 

Lasource, Birotteau, Ducos, 

DUCHATEL, 



members of the Na- 
tional Convention. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



205 



leaders of the 
» Constitutional 
Party. 



members 

of the 

Jacobin 

Club. 



M. Bailly, an astronomer, Provost of the 

Merchants of Paris, 

Pierre Joseph Marie 'j , _ 2 . __. 

-d I members ot the JNa- 

DE BaRNAVE, >■ , . . . . . 

. -rx tional Assembly, 

Adrien Duport, } J - 

M. la Harpe, author of " Melanie," 

M. Andrieux, an author. 

M. Sedaine, a gem-cutter, 

Chamfort, poet-laureate, 

Marie-Joseph Chenier, author of " Charles IX." 

M. Laclos, author of " Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' 

Lais, a singer, 

Napoleon Bonaparte, a Lieutenant of Artillery, 

Talma, ) David, ) . 

hum. I act0rS ' Veenet, J P amters ' 

MM. Barras, Chodieu, Chapellier, and Mont 

LOSIER, 

Honore Gabriel Yictor Biquetti, Comte de 
Mir abe au, 

Doctor Gtjillotin, inventor of the guillotine, 

Charles de Lameth, 

Alexandre de Beauharnais, 

Abbes de Sieves and Maury, 

Prieur de la Marne, 

Regnault de Saint Jean d' Angel y, 

MM. Thouret, Salles, Mounier, Buzot, Lally, 
Desmetjniers, Guilhermy, Malhouet, Tar- 
get, and de Latour Maubourg, 

Marquis de Lafayette, Commander-in-Chief of the National 
Guard, 

Marquis de Chateauneuf, 

Francois de Neufchateau, 

Camus, the Recorder, 

MM. Cochon, Grandpre, Rouyer 
Lequinio, and Quinette, 



of the 
National 
Assembly. 



members of the National 
Convention. 



206 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 



of the Dumouriez 
Ministry. 



Baron de Necker, Prime Minister, 1789-90. 

Chevalier de Grave, ) 

M. Cahier de Gerville, j of the Kin S' s Council in lm - 

General Dumouriez, Secretary of Foreign Affairs m 1792. 

M. Lacoste, Minister of the Navy, 

M. Clavieres, Minister of Finance, 

M. Duranthon, Minister of Justice, 

M. Servan, Secretary of War (Chev- 
alier de Grave's successor), 

M. Chambonnas, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, succeeding Gen- 
eral Dumouriez. 

M. Lajard, Secretary of War, his colleague. 

M. Monge, Minister of the Navy under the Republic. 

M. de Noailles, French Ambassador at Vienna. 

M. de Segur, Ambassador at Berlin. 

Marechal de Rochambeau, *\ 

Generals Luckner, Kellerman, Beaurepaire, | officers of 
Custine, Beurnonville, and Chazot, 

Lieutenant-Colonel Bertois, 

Theobald Dillon, 

MM. de Biron and de Watteville, 

Mathay, keeper of the Temple Tower. 

Turgy, an attendant of the Princesses at the Temple. 

Tison, ) . . • . 

Madame Tison, j municl P al s P ies at ^ Temple. 

Citizens Gobeau, Danjou, Jacques ^| ... 

Roux, Tcklot, and Meunieb, [ mu ™ipal ^\ on 

James, a teacher of English, J *"iy at the Temple. 

Rocher, a janitor at the Temple. 

MM. Malesherbes, Tronchet, and Deseze, advocates defend- 
ing the King. 

M. Garat, Minister of Justice, 

M. Lebrun, Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, 

M. Grovelle, Secretary of the 
Council, 



( the French 
armies on 
the fron- 
tiers. 



i 



members of the Executive 

- Council notifying the King 

of his sentence. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 207 

Abbe Edgeworth de Firmont, the King's confessor at his 
execution. 

Citizen Ricave, rector of Saint Madeleine, "j 

Citizens Renard and Damoreau, vicars raa n ^ e ° cia 
of Saint Madeleine Parish, I re P n " 

Citizens Leblanc and Dubois, Adminis- I 

trators of the Department of Paris, J °' 

Comte Cagliostro, assuming the name of Baron Zannone, a 
Genoese banker. 

Doctor Honore Gilbert, physician to the King. 

Sebastien Gilbert, his son. 

Jean Baptiste Toussaint de Beausire, an adventurer. 

Nicole Oliva Legay, " a woman resembling the Queen." 

Toussaint, son of Beausire and Nicole. 

Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bishop of Autun. 

The Curates of Saint Paul's and Agenteuil. 

MM. de Romeuf and Gouvin, aides-de-camp to Lafayette. 

Romainvilliers, a commander of the National Guard. 

Matthew Dumas, an aide-de-camp in the National Guard. 

Farmer-General Augeaud. 

Marceau, a member of the City Council. 

Prooureur-Syndic Roederer. 

Charles Louis Sanson, commonly called Monsieur de Paris. 

Citizen Palloy, municipal architect. 

Madame Yillette, Voltaire's adopted daughter. 

Mademoiselle Charlotte de Robespierre, sister of Robes- 
pierre. 

Madame d'Arazon, Mirabeau's niece. 

Madame du Saillant, Mirabeau's sister. 

Albertine, wife of Marat. 

Madame Danton. 

Lucile Duplessis Laridon, wife of Camille Desmoulins. 

MM. Dumont and Frichot, friends of Mirabeau. 

Cerutti, pronouucing the eulogy at Mirabeau's funeral. 

Doctor Cabanis. 



208 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

M. Lescuyer, a notary at Avignon. 

Major Prefontaine. 

Jean Baptiste Drouet, son of the post-superintendent at St. 

Menehould. 

Gillaume, ) 

iyj- t assisting Drouet to arrest the King's flight. 

M. Sausse, town solicitor of Varennes. 

Madame Sausse. 

Hannont, commander of the National Guard of Varennes. 

Dietrich, Mayor of Strasburg. 

M. Champagneux, editor of " The Lyons Journal." 

MM. Bosc, Bancal des Issarts, and Lanthenas, friends of 

Monsieur and Madame Roland. 
M. Sourdat, a lawyer of Troyes, offering to defend the King. 
Oge, a Saint Domingo negro. 
Madame Dugazon, a singer. 
Saint-Prix, an actor. 
Olympe de Gouges, a dramatic writer. 
Caron de Beaumarchais, author of " Figaro." 
Pleur d'^pine, a recruiting officer. 
Father Bemy, a military pensioner. 
Pelline, Mirabeau's secretary. 
Teisch and Jean, Mirabeau's servants. 
Fritz, Count Cagliostro's servant. 
Mallet, a wine dealer. 
Duplay, a joiner. 
Madame Duplay, his wife. 
Mademoiselle Duplay. 
Baptiste, servant of Comte de Charny. 
Leclerc, an amorer. 
Master Guidon, a carpenter. 
Brisack, servant of M. de Choiseul. 
Hucher and Francois, bakers. 
Buseby, a wig-maker. 
Lajariette, a barber. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 209 

The Register of the Court or the Chatelet. 

Louis, a turnkey at the Chatelet prison. 

Frederick William, King of Prussia. 

The Duke of Brunswick. 

Countess Lichtenau. 

Comte Clereayt, an Austrian General. 

William Pitt, the Younger. 

RESIDENTS OF VILLERS COTTERETS. 

Billot, a farmer, afterwards a Deputy to the Legislative 

Assembly, condemning the King. 
Catherine, his daughter. 

Isidore, son of Catherine and Vicomte de Charny. 
Madame Billot. 

M. de Longpre, Mayor of Villers Cotteret. 
Abbe Fortier. 

Mademoiselle Adelaide, his niece. 
Ange Pitou, Captain of the National Guard of Haramont. 
Desire Maniquet, Pitou's lieutenant. 
Claude Tellier, Sergeant of the Haramont National Guard. 
Messieurs Boulanger and Molicar, of Pitou's troops. 
Doctor Raynal. 
Madame Clement, a nurse. 
Father Clouis. 
Pather Lajeunesse. 
Master Delauroy, ) 
Master Bligny, \ tailors " 
Picard, a locksmith. 
Mother Colombe, distributor of letters. 
Mother Pagot. 
Pagotin, her son. 
Parolet. 
Rigolet, a locksmith. 



THE 

CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The "Chevalier de Maison-Rouge," though it 
deals with events subsequent to those covered by 
the earlier stories of the Marie Antoinette cycle, 
was written at an earlier date. In it we are intro- 
duced to a new set of personages, and see no more 
of the characters whose fortunes furnish the ficti- 
tious as distinguished from the historical interest of 
the earlier stories. 

The months which elapsed between the execution 
of the King and the appearance in the Place de la 
Revolution of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette were 
thickly strewn with tragedy, particularly after the 
final conflict between the Gironde and the Moun- 
tain, and the decisive victory of the latter, resulting 
in the undisputed supremacy of the band of men 
in whom we now see the personification of the Reign 
of Terror. 

Those portions of the narrative which describe 
the life of the queen at the Temple, and subse- 



212 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

quently in the Conciergerie, are founded strictly 
upon fact. Of the treatment accorded to the little 
Dauphin by Simon, who is given much prominence 
in the story, it need only be said that it falls fai 
short of the truth as it is to be found in number- 
less memoirs and documents. There is nothing in 
all history more touching and heartrending than the 
fate of this innocent child, who was literally done to 
death by sheer brutality in less than two years ; 
nor is there any one of the excesses committed by 
the extreme revolutionists which has done more to 
cause posterity to fail to realize the vast benefits 
which mankind owes to the Eevolution, in the face 
of the unnamable horrors which were perpetrated 
in its name. 

The noble answer of Marie Antoinette to the 
unnatural charges brought against her by Hebert 
(not Simon) was actually made at her trial. 

There is no direct historical authority for the 
various attempts herein detailed to effect the escape 
of the Queen, although rumors of such were circu- 
lating unceasingly. The titular hero of the book 
is not an historical personage, nor are Maurice 
Lindey and Lorin ; but the latter are faithful rep j 
resentatives of a by no means small class of 
sincere and devoted republicans who turned aside 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 2 1 3 

with shrinking horror from the atrocities of the 
Terror. 

The mutual heroism of Maurice and Lorin in the 
final catastrophe reminds us of the similar conduct 
of Gaston in the " Eegent's Daughter " when he fails 
to reach Nantes with the reprieve until the head of 
one of his comrades had fallen. Nor can one avoid 
a thought of Sydney Carton laying down his life 
for Charles Darnay, in Charles Dickens's " Tale of 
Two Cities," wherein the horrors of the Terror are 
so vividly pictured. 

One must go far to seek for a more touching and 
pathetic love-episode than that of Maurice and 
Genevieve, whose sinning, if sinning it was, was 
forced upon them by the cold and unscrupulous 
Dixmer in the pursuit of his one unchangeable 
idea. 

On the 16th of October, 1793, the daughter of 
the Caesars lost her life through the instrumen- 
tality of the machine which we saw Cagliostro 
exhibit to her in a glass of water at the Chateau 
de Taverney more than twenty years before. Then 
she was in the bloom of youth and beauty, a young 
queen coming to reign over a people who had just 
begun to realize their wrongs and their power. 
To-day she is a woman of thirty-eight, prema- 



214 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

turely aged, but bearing about her still the noble 
dignity of her ancient race, and proving anew, as 
Charles I. had proved, and as her own husband 
had proved, that the near approach of death 
brings forth the noblest qualities in those of royal 
lineage. 

We cannot better end this brief note than by 
quoting the characteristic but powerful apostrophe 
of Carlyle in his essay upon the "Diamond 
Necklace." 

" Beautiful Highborn, thou wert so foully hurled 
low! For if thy being came to thee out of old 
Hapsburg dynasties, came it not also (like my own) 
out of Heaven ? Sunt lachrymce rerum, et mentem 
mortalia tangunt. Oh, is there a man's heart that 
thinks without pity of those long months and years 
of slow-wasting ignominy : of thy birth, soft-cradled 
in imperial Schonbrunn, the winds of Heaven not 
to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on 
softness, thy eye on splendor: and then of thy 
death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine 
and Fouquier-Tinville's judgment bar was but the 
merciful end ? Look there, man born of woman ! 
The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair 
is gray with care : the brightness of those eyes is 
quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 215 

stony pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, 
which her own hand has mended, attire the Queen 
of the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest 
pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to 
stop ; a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it 
again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far 
as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac 
heads : the air deaf with their triumph yell ! The 
living-dead must shudder with yet one other pang : 
her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue 
of agony that pale face which she hides with her 
hands. There is, then, no heart to say, God pity 
thee ? think not of these : think of him whom 
thou worshippest, the Crucified, — who also treading 
the wine-press alone, fronted sorrow still deeper: 
and triumphed over it, and made it holy : and built 
of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the 
wretched ! Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. 
One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step 
was once so light, — where thy children shall not 
dwell. The head is on the block : the axe rushes — 
Dumb lies the World : that wild-yelling World and 
all its madness is behind thee." 



THE 



CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1793. 



prisoners at the Temple. 



in an attempt 
rescue the Queen. 



to 



Marie Antoinette, 

The Dauphin, 

Madame Royale, 

The Princess Elizabeth, 

Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, 

M. DlXMER, 

Genevieve, his wife, 

Sophie Tison, 

Lieutenant Maurice Lindey, a patriot, in love with Genevieve 

Maximilien-Jean Lorin, his friend. 

Santerre, Commandant of the Parisian National Guard. 

Simon, a cobbler. 

President Harmand, of the Revolutionary Tribunal. 

Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser. 

M. Giraud, the city architect. 

Chauveau Lagarde, counsel for the Queen. 



Jean Paul Marot, 

Robespierre, 

Danton, 

Chenier, 

Hebert, 

Fabre d'^glantine, 

collot d'herbois, 

Robert Lindet, 



Montagnards. 



218 LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 

MM. Yergniaud, Peraud, Brissot, Louvet, ) Girondins 

Petion, Yalaze, Lanjuinais, Barbaroux, ) 
MM. Roland, Servien, Clavieres, > of the Prench Ministry, 

Le Brtjn, and Monge, j August, 1793. 

Generals Dumouriez, Miacrinski, ^ officers commanding the 

Steingel, Neuilly, Yalence, j- Erench armies on the 

Dampierre, and Miranda, J frontiers. 

Henriot, Commandant-General of the National Guard. 
Citizen Devaux, of the National Guard. 
Citizens Tonlan, Lepitre, Agricola, | of the Municipal 

and Mercevatjlt, ) Guard. 

Grammont, Adjutant-Major. 
Tison, employed at the Temple Prison. 
Madame Tison, his wife. 
Arthemise, ex-dancer at the opera. 
Abbe Girard. 
Dame Jacinthe, his servant. 
Turgy, an old waiter of Louis XYL, attending the royal family 

at the Temple. 
Muguet, femme-de-chambre of Dixmer. 
Madame Plumeau, hostess of an alehouse near the Temple. 
Agesilaus, servant to Maurice Lindey. 
Aristide, concierge at Maurice's house. 
Gracchus, a turnkey at the Conciergerie. 
Bichard, jailer at the Conciergerie. 
Madame Bichard, his wife. 

Duchesse, J Gendarmes at the Conciergerie. 

Gilbert, ) 

Sanson, the executioner. 



THE COUNT OF MONTE CEISTO. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
Period, 1815-1838. 

Edmond Dantes, a Marseilles sailor, mate of the " Pharaon," 
afterwards Count of Monte Cristo, assuming the names of 
Lord TTilmore, Abbe Busoni, and Sinbad the Sailor. 

Louis Dantes, his father. 

Mercedes, a Catalan, betrothed to Edmond Dantes. 

Eernand Mondego, her cousin, afterwards Comte de Morcerf. 

Yicomte Albert de Morcerf, his son. 

Danglars, supercargo of the "Pharaon," afterwards Baron 
Danglars, a Paris banker. 

Baronne Danglars, his wife. 

Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars, their daughter. 

Louise d'Armilly, her music-teacher and friend. 

M. Morell, owner of the " Pharaon." 

Madame Morell. 

MAXIMILIAN MoKELL, ) ^ ^^ 

Julie Morell, ) 

Emmanuel Herbaut, ) clerks in the house of Morell and 
Cocles, ) Sons, Marseilles, 

Gaspard Caderousse, a Marseilles tailor, afterwards landlord of 

the Pont du Gard Inn. 
Madeleine, his wife, otherwise known as La Carconte. 
The Emperor Napoleon. 
Louis XVIII. 



members of the 

Bonapartist Club 

in the Rue St. 

Jacques. 



220 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 

Baron Dandre, Minister of Police, ) x^ovalists 

Due de Blacas, j 

M. Noirtier de Villefort, an adherent of Napoleon. 

M. Gerard de Villefort, his son, procureur du roi. 

Marquis de Saint-Meran. 

Marquise de Saint-Meran. 

Mademoiselle Renee de Saint-Meran, their daughter, be- 
trothed to M. Gerard de Villefort. 

Comte de Salvieux, friend of M. de Saint-Meran. 

General Flavien de Quesnel. 

Baron Franz d'J^pinay, his son. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Jacques n 
Beaurepaire, 

Brigadier-General J^tienne Duchampy, 

Claude Lecharpal, keeper of streams and 
forests, 

Marechel Bertrand. 

M. de Boville, inspector of prisons. 

The Governor of the Chateau d'If. 

Abbe Faria, a prisoner in the Chateau d'If. 

A Jailor, at the Chateau d'If. 

The Mayor of Marseilles. 

Captain Baldi, of " La Jeune Amelie," a Genoese smuggler. 

Jacopo, one of his crew. 

Maitre Pastrini, proprietor of the Hotel de Londres, Rome. 

Gaetano, a Roman sailor. 

Cucumetto, a brigand chief. 

_ ' c of Cucumetto's troop. 

DlAVOLACCIO, ' 

Rita, betrothed to Carlini. 

Luigi Vamp a, a shepherd boy, afterwards a Captain of Roman 

brigands. 
Teresa, his betrothed. 
Peppino, a shepherd. 
Andrea Rondola, a condemned murderer. 



LIST OF CHARACTERS. 221 

Com™ de San Felice ' I Roman noblemen. 
Due de Bracciano, ) 

Carmela, Comte de San Eelice's daughter. 

COMTESSE GUICCIOLI. 

Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, au adventurer. 
Benedetto, passing under the name of Andrea de Cavalcanti. 
M. Lucien Debray, private secretary ^ 



friends of Albert de 
Morcerf. 



to the Minister of the Interior, 
M. Beau champ, an editor, 
Comte de Chateau-Renaud, 
Helo'ise, Villefort's second wife. 
£douard, her son. 
Mademoiselle Valentine, Villefort's daughter by his first 

wife, in love with Maximilian Morell. 
Doctor d'Avrigny, Villefort's physician. 
M. Deschamps, a notary. 
Ali Tebelin, Pacha of Janina. 
Vasiliki, his wife. 

Haydee, daughter of Ali Pacha and Vasiliki. 
Selim, favorite of Ali Pacha. 
Bertuccio, steward to the Count of Monte Cristo, 
Assunta, Bertuccio's sister-in-law. 
Baptistin, Monte Cristo's valet. 
Ali, a Nubian mute, slave to Monte Cristo. 
Abbe Adelmonte, a Sicilian. 
Germain, Albert de Morcerf s valet. 
£tienne, valet to Danglars. 
Barrois, Noirtier's servant. 
Fanny, Mademoiselle de Villefort's maid. 
Pere Pamphile, of La Reserve Inn. 
Captain Leclerc, \ 

Penelon, a sailor, V in the service of M. Morell. 
Captain Gaumard, J 
Joannes, a jeweller. 



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